D. C. Southwick

After recently loading up EA’s latest title (“Need for Speed: Undercover”) on Microsoft’s latest RC build of Windows 7, I have to say that I am left scratching my head. What is the logic in creating games that are not win-able? Creating challanging & sometimes frustrating games is always a good thing, however you DO (read: should) make them able to be won, as this gives your target audience a sense of accomplishment, and leaves them waiting for the next challenge (read: next 50$ game.) However, if you make something so difficult that your target audience writes it off, you are seriously hurting your reputation (and bottom line.) Why EA decided to go with an un-scalable difficulty system that is completely unrealistic (broken) is beyond me.

For those of you that haven’t had the “pleasure” of this latest iteration of Need For Speed, let me fill you in. The newest title is what you’d might expect: shiny cars, smooth graphics, and a wonderful online system. However, my problem lies in the career mode. In order to advance, you must beat other AI’s in races (nothing new…) but they’ve added a new “Domination” flag that awards if the player “Dominates” the race. Well, it seems that this moniker is nothing more than insult to injury. Many players (and avid fans) are left unable to advance after “dominating” by more than a few seconds – because the AI is over-scaled.

What does EA have to say on this:    …well… they made it harder.

Jerks!