EA today announced they will be switching off online services for a whole bunch of not so popular games, and have released a complete list of titles that will soon be affected.
Every year EA switches off online services for many of their older game titles, due to the lack of online players and technical support they require to stay online; This year is no different.
As games get replaced with newer titles, the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point where it's feasible to continue keeping online services running.
In other words, if you want to finish your online achievements or check out a demo for any of the following games, please do so asap.
Here is the complete list of games which will soon have online services shutdown.
"gamexxover" from www.360-hq.com is currently involved in the new Battlefield: Bad Company BETA for Xbox 360 owners and has been kind enough to let us all know his first impressions. So read on..
Throw out the rules of engagement, this is all-out war! Built from the ground-up for next-generation consoles using Digital Illusions' bleeding-edge Frostbite game engine, Battlefield: Bad Company drops gamers behind enemy lines with a squad of renegade soldiers who risk it all on a personal quest for gold and revenge. Featuring a deep, cinematic single-player experience loaded with adventure and dark humor, the game delivers the series' trademark sandbox gameplay in a universe where nearly everything is destructible.
Introduction
After playing the beta pretty hard for several days I thought I would share some of my impressions. First I'll say the feel of the game is very much like Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (BF2) with an over haul.
Building Destruction
GOOD - 100% of the buildings and structures are destructable, You can break down doors and fences and even trees with anything including your knife, walls and other tougher structure requires a little more punch, any explosive will do it, m203 is usualy the weapon of choice which you get 6 shots with and if you find the ammo box you can rearm with out respawning, But dont worry about being noob tubed to death as the blast radious is small and not overly powerful when used on other people, you can take a nearly direct hit and still survive.
BAD - 100% of the buildings are destructable but no building is 100% destructable. you can not totaly collapse a building, you can take out the entire ceiling and all exterior walls on houses, a couple inner walls will remain to keep a skeleton structure up with floors intact, Brick buildings are the same but some will have a wall on one side that will not come down, but 3 out of 4 aint bad.
If you are on second floor you can not blow a hole in the floor to open a hole to look down.
Snipers
GOOD - lots of cover, more than in battle field 2, even in the desert map there is alot of palm trees tall and short to cover you.
--The useless smoke grenade has been replaced with a little soccer ball looking device that you throw like a grenade and it puts out a radar pulse for a little while to see if any one is close to you.
--- you have a laser designator that after it locks on to a vehicle, you switch to a rear of the bomb view and have to manualy guide the bomb to the target, Takes some practice, But cool as you can lock on to a tank, then as the bomb is coming down you chan choose to stear somewhere else if you see an enemy on foot or decide to take out a building instead.
BAD - People can spawn off of you, you work hard to be realy sneaky and find a great spot to snipe from or just work the laser in total stealth, you are all set, then some goof ball spawns off of you and opens up with his LMG standing right next to you, putting all enemy eyes on your possition.
NO PRONE!! the developers have decided that in this game players will not be able to go to a prone possition, this is very bad when you are behind cover but your head sticks up when crouched, someone opens up fire on your possition you can not take cover by going prone. Not just snipers, no one can go prone.
GOOD - Not much change at all, same as BF2 but with one big fix, the tanks are now not stoped in thier tracks by a mear fence post, wreckage or a 55 gal drum in the street, you can pretty much go over and through most anything, you will have a blast just driving through the forrest clear cutting every tree like a weed eater through a flower garden.
BAD - you can still get stuck in some dips/ shallow holes in the terrain but this is rare. --- The tanks are much slower than in BF2.
HUMVEE'S:
GOOD - Its a Humvee
BAD - These are not your fathers Humvee's, these babys are stuck in first gear, they are very slow, I would estamate a top speed of about 20 mph maybe? Much slower than those in bf2.
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