So, apparently EA are releasing a new (free of sorts) Battlefield game which appears to have at the least taken its graphical cue from Team Fortress 2.
BBC News article.
Official Website.
It'll be supported by ingame advertising and micropayments. This being EA you just know they'll be making you pay through the nose for even the simplest weapon or item.
£1.99 for go faster stripes on your jeep!
I think the truly sad thing is this quote from the BBC News article: "The games has a "cartoon-feel" and has been made simpler to play, with more emphasis on participation and fun than skill and strategy."
One of the biggest, perhaps best things about Battlefield was the strategy and tactics. On large maps it's an ebb and flow as each team adapts to each other. If they move it to a plain shooter I think the series has taken a turn for the worst.
UPDATE!Customisation trailer.
There will be a beta.
That neato theme music is up for download.
Minimum specs:
* Operating System: Windows XP or Windows Vista
* CPU: 1.0 GHz
* RAM: 512 Mb (1Gb on Windows Vista)
* Video Card: 64Mb DirectX compliant video card with at least pixel shader 2.0 support
* Hard Drive space: 1Gb of space is required to install the game
* Internet connection: 256kbit Cable/DSL connection
UPDATE! (17/03/09)
Beta keys are now being handed out.
PSN |
Steam
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Posts
I assume you mean by this "completely ripped it off".
When i went to the website i thought "Hey its weird they have ads for TF2 on here", until i realised my mistake.
I thought Bad Company was the next BF game though.
Check out my band, click the banner.
fixed for more waugh.
I must say, I really appreciate this new trend - with this and HoMM Kingdoms coming out this year, I can save me alot of money and still fulfill all my gaming needs.
But I am just stunned by the blatant ripoff of TF2
I mean holy shit
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Man...got to love this spin:
Yeah, so we've decided you're going to have to pay for every new map and gun we release
There's a reason people like Valve better, it's the free stuff (games modes, maps, hell 3 games in a box was awesome). EA doesn't quite seem to get this yet.
The shameful bandwagon jumping? The in game advertising? A game built around micro payments?
Yeah, like that design will last.
See, but this makes your last two points pretty much invalid.
I'm going to make a prediction now...
It will be like six unskippable intros at the beginning that people will most likely mod out in the first few days
And maybe some ads plastered all over their horrible server browser.
If there's one thing they need to do for this game, it's give it a good server browser. I don't think the BF series has ever been graced with one
Pretty much sums up my views on micropayments. I'll stick to TF2, thanks all the same.
"They're making an ad-supported game and releasing it for free? YOU MONEY GRUBBING SONS OF..
I'm pretty excited by that idea.
Or perhaps we're just skeptical about the form the micropayments are going to take? Maybe?
At least they've stated that you can't buy an in-game advantage, although I'm willing to wait and see on that.
Yeah, but they're not the first company to base a game on ads and payments, but because they're EA, they'll be making you pay to play!!!!
Not because they're EA. It's simply endemic to that publishing model. Like Airan said a lot of games from Asia do just that.
EA once again prove that if it's not -
1. An established franchise
2. A very established genre
3. A license
4. Cheap for them to acquire publishing rights
Then they aren't interested in it.
Sigh.
Basically, unfounded EA-hate pisses me off no end.
Well I hate that business model. But I hate racing sims too. Doesn't mean I think devs/publishers who make them are bad.
OH NOES I have to pay to pimp out my guy! Then I won't pay and I'll just use the default player skin. Just as well it's free.
These words are the best put together ever.
Who'd have thought a publicly floated company was interested in making money? And besides, even with the other major publishers you'd be hard pressed to name more than a couple of games that didn't tick all those boxes.
And EA are busy funding Spore which is very much an unknown except that it has Will Wrights name on it.
Lewie, I like you, I really do. Please tell me that's sarcasm.
Activision maybe not so much, but I bet Guitar Hero wasn't an easy sell.
Gaming for cheap students has arrived!
Also because I hardly have time to spend gaming due to work, I'm not at all tempted to micropay for anything because I'm happy running about with the lowest-end pistol for twenty minutes every few days. Awesome.
No idea what Freshly Picked is, but Brain Training is just a modified gaming section of a newspaper, Nintendogs is just a pretty tamagotchi, etc. Plus both of those are hardly huge budget games. It's not risky if it doesn't cost much.
There's also one or two popular franchises by Nintendo and Activision that see frequent iterations. I'm just saying if you're going to wade in on EA for releasing only safe-bet games (do I need to mention skate again? I'll do it..), they're not the only ones.
Again, it's a free game that I'll likely pick up and play when I otherwise probably wouldn't have. If I have to go without a few bells and whistles because I don't want to pay £4.99 for rims and spinnaz on my Jeep, then so be it.
If it turns out to not be any good, well then I'll just have to demand my money back.
The idea of a micropayment sort-of free Madden game is vaguely intriguing, though. Think of all of the armchair quarterbacks in this world playing that on their cable boxes or whatnot. Maybe even Peyton Manning can do the commercials...
I'd just like to mention that when the DS first arrived on the scene everyone thought it'd be an abject failure and that the PSP would rule the handheld market.
Nintendo took a risk with the DS, hence why it's actually called the DS and not the Gameboy, which at the time was the established name for a quality gaming handheld. Nintendo didn't want to risk tarnishing the Gameboy name in-case it was a failure.
/derailing my own post
---
I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
How can you tone down the difficulty much in a PvP game?
I'll do this kindly. Activision bought Red Octane, the original Guitar Hero publisher. Now what other money grabbing publisher goes around buying up devs/pubs and running their franchises into the ground?
Hmm, I wonder what kind of stuff they will be charging for?
Really? I thought they published the first one.
Hmm, maybe I need to change my opinion...
Edit: although this discussion is kinda off topic, lets end it here.
I wouldn't be surprised if they do it exactly the same as 2142 but you can pay to unlock things, instead of grinding for 100s of hours, maybe a pilot's/drivers license required to drive some of the better vehicles. Add in some custom avatars/weapon skins as well which are only available through p2p purchases and there's money making potential.
Bullets!
I would wager that it'll mostly be customisation options for your character and different weapon models. If they've said they won't give paying players an advantage, I'm ready to believe that until proven otherwise.