DICE: Medal of Honor Taliban controversy affected reviews
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We're not firm believers in the "any press is good press" maxim. Just ask the Xbox 360 and its Red Ring of Death which garnered many a headline -- headlines that reminded would-be consumers why they should hold off on purchasing the console. It would appear EA DICE, the developer behind the multiplayer component of Medal of Honor – the Afghanistan-based shooter in which the Taliban murders American troops – has now too learned this lesson.
"The controversy did affect some reviews," DICE's Patrick Liu told Eurogamer. "It stirs a lot of feelings, just the setting. And that does affect people's judgment." While it may have affected some people's judgment, it didn't stop the reboot from moving two million units in just two weeks; not quite Call of Duty numbers, but a healthy start. But back to those reviews: "The game is better than today's reviews are indicating," EA' s Patrick Soderlund previously told Eurogamer.
"We're also competing with ourselves," Liu continued, referring to DICE's own Battlefield series. "Obviously we're competing with Call of Duty. It's a very tricky situation to be squeezed in between those giants." He added that competing against Battlefield "can feel awkward sometimes" and, while plans aren't set for an MOH sequel, he replied both "yes and no" when asked if he'd want to work on one. "It would be cool to continue to develop the franchise. At the same time we have a lot of exciting stuff going on in DICE as well that we have been working on in parallel." We're guessing that would be: Battlefield 3, another installment in the Battlefield: Bad Company series, and Mirror's Edge 2. You are working on Mirror's Edge 2, right, DICE?
"The controversy did affect some reviews," DICE's Patrick Liu told Eurogamer. "It stirs a lot of feelings, just the setting. And that does affect people's judgment." While it may have affected some people's judgment, it didn't stop the reboot from moving two million units in just two weeks; not quite Call of Duty numbers, but a healthy start. But back to those reviews: "The game is better than today's reviews are indicating," EA' s Patrick Soderlund previously told Eurogamer.
"We're also competing with ourselves," Liu continued, referring to DICE's own Battlefield series. "Obviously we're competing with Call of Duty. It's a very tricky situation to be squeezed in between those giants." He added that competing against Battlefield "can feel awkward sometimes" and, while plans aren't set for an MOH sequel, he replied both "yes and no" when asked if he'd want to work on one. "It would be cool to continue to develop the franchise. At the same time we have a lot of exciting stuff going on in DICE as well that we have been working on in parallel." We're guessing that would be: Battlefield 3, another installment in the Battlefield: Bad Company series, and Mirror's Edge 2. You are working on Mirror's Edge 2, right, DICE?
Reader Comments (44)
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:26PM geniuswithagun said
No comments yet. :)
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:38PM That Burning Sensation said
@geniuswithagun
How long have you been waiting to do that?
Reply
How long have you been waiting to do that?
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:28PM Acosta02 said
RIGHT, DICE?!
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:30PM LoosePampelmousse said
It's what you get for selling your souls to the (EA) devil!
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:31PM Billlop said
To be honest, i wish Danger Close made the multiplayer too. Im not saying its bad online, far from it, but it just felt like a shrunken down Battlefield. Compare that to the mindblowing single player and it just feels...odd
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 8:15PM lenandude said
@Billlop Definitely! All the stuff that made single player amazing was taken away from multiplayer. Lean and peek, ability to slide into cover (which I really liked), the unique feel of each weapon (and the weapons actually had recoil!). Also the amazing graphics. But that isn't as important as the other stuff. Hopefully they develop the multiplayer for the next one and really make it their own.
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Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:34PM RubMyGrenades said
Guess it didn't work out like the "No Russians" controversy
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:35PM JONNNathannn said
The campaign is pretty great but the online wasn't anything special and I found the vast majority of reviews to be very fair. The problem was, as admitted, the game needs to be better to join the ranks of the titans like Call of Duty.
It really doesn't help that they released this so close to CoD. If it came out in a summer drought it could have had a lot in it's favor, instead people will just hold off for what is clearly the king in this battle.
It really doesn't help that they released this so close to CoD. If it came out in a summer drought it could have had a lot in it's favor, instead people will just hold off for what is clearly the king in this battle.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:36PM JONNNathannn said
Oh and if Mirror's Edge doesn't happen very soon I'll protest EA and Dice, I swear I will.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 9:49PM maveric101 said
@JONNNathannn
i can't WAIT for a mirror's edge 2. the first is one of my favorite games ever. i just really love the gameplay. in fact, i think i'll go play some right now...
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i can't WAIT for a mirror's edge 2. the first is one of my favorite games ever. i just really love the gameplay. in fact, i think i'll go play some right now...
Posted: Nov 8th 2010 8:31AM Jonthomasdesigns said
@JONNNathannn .. I wish i could play the first one for more than 10 mins without wanting to barf .. i think its because i sit really close to 60" tv .. but damn i feel sick just thinking about playing
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Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:36PM Soldarith said
The game has a lot of other issues stopping it from being a CoD selling success, as well. Mainly the pay-to-play online model EA is pushing with the title; hence why I only ever see 10-15k online (Xbox) in evening US ET hours, compared to hundreds of thousands for CoD: MW2. This model hurts the title substantially in the rental arena, where players will just toss the game back without every touching multi-player portion. And, honestly, to pay $50-60 for just the single-player campaign of a whole 6 hours is an absolute waste of money.
Furthermore, the online game play is still plagued with problems. Most large maps are a sniper fest and the smaller ones are camp fests. ALL maps suffer from spawn point camping/bombing, which in the end, is nothing more than poor/rushed coding.
This game represents a "could-have-been". Not because of Taliban but because of EA. The title will shortly fade into the shadows, once CoD is released. Its a shame too, because a lot of research work into the game; they just couldn't execute.
Furthermore, the online game play is still plagued with problems. Most large maps are a sniper fest and the smaller ones are camp fests. ALL maps suffer from spawn point camping/bombing, which in the end, is nothing more than poor/rushed coding.
This game represents a "could-have-been". Not because of Taliban but because of EA. The title will shortly fade into the shadows, once CoD is released. Its a shame too, because a lot of research work into the game; they just couldn't execute.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:37PM Petebot330 said
That's BS. I don't think I read a single review that mentioned that more than just in passing. The thing that killed their reviews was making a game that held your hand so much. Every reviewer was turned off by it.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:40PM Creative said
Total BS, this game has more technical problems than ideological ones. DICE, I'm looking at your sub-par MP.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:40PM theSkillfull1 said
Hope they don't think we've forgotten about Mirrors Edge, I want it!
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:41PM sammo21 said
I beat the game on hard, played about 7-8 hours of multiplayer and gained over 780% of the trophies....all of the review scores giving MoH a negative light are accurate. If this kind of talk was coming from an EA PR guy or someone @ Danger Close...I could tolerate it, but from D.I.C.E.? Come on guys, you know you were forced to make a multiplayer game @ the very last minute, but don't make these lame excuses; its way beneath you.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:49PM Soldarith said
One additional point, in regards to multiplayer I wanted to mention:
DICE has essentially become the Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online, Champions Online, etc) of FPS multiplayer games: cookie cutter design that is a simple copy/paste of their first multiplayer title, with new skins and sounds. Meaning that if you played ANY of the previous dozen online Battlefield series of titles, then you've already played MoH online.
It is absolutely shameful with what EA did to this title, especially as a reload. It is a Medal of Dishonor to gamers, more than anything else. Let's face it, when a game gives you an award for just playing online for a few hours, something is wrong.
DICE has essentially become the Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online, Champions Online, etc) of FPS multiplayer games: cookie cutter design that is a simple copy/paste of their first multiplayer title, with new skins and sounds. Meaning that if you played ANY of the previous dozen online Battlefield series of titles, then you've already played MoH online.
It is absolutely shameful with what EA did to this title, especially as a reload. It is a Medal of Dishonor to gamers, more than anything else. Let's face it, when a game gives you an award for just playing online for a few hours, something is wrong.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 4:50PM GroundControl2MT said
if they do battlefield 3 before mirrors edge 2 I don't even what i will do
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:52PM sadistic freek said
@GroundControl2MT
I'll put Lisa Miskovsky's "Still Alive" song on repeat, and cry myself to sleep.
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I'll put Lisa Miskovsky's "Still Alive" song on repeat, and cry myself to sleep.
Posted: Nov 6th 2010 12:42AM 8bitartist said
@GroundControl2MT
considering there are already talking about people getting an invite into the bf3 beta, you better start figuring out what youre gonna do. they dont care about ME2.
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considering there are already talking about people getting an invite into the bf3 beta, you better start figuring out what youre gonna do. they dont care about ME2.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:02PM VegaThePunisher said
Maybe the fact that BF:BC2, COD and MoH are all pretty much the same damn game affected both the reviews and the sales.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:31PM oboynesquick said
thats low dice, rly low...
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:34PM FriedConsole said
Blame terrorism for everything!! It works for politicians. Why not game reviews?
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:35PM wcarnation said
IT WAS JUST TOO HOT TO GET GOOD REVIEWS, YEAH, THATS IT
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:45PM EDZiLLUH said
why can't people deal with the truth.? people get affected by anything. stop being sensitive
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 5:57PM Cryo said
Excuses, excuses...
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 6:27PM Yanksrul5 said
The reviews were bad because the game is bad. Broken spawning. The classes didn't have enough depth. And the single player A.I. was terribly bad.
DICE and EA need to stop pointing fingers at false reasons to why their game was reviewed poorly. They should just be happy that they fooled all those people in buying their bad game.
DICE and EA need to stop pointing fingers at false reasons to why their game was reviewed poorly. They should just be happy that they fooled all those people in buying their bad game.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 6:31PM Kinney said
"DICE: 'Everyone's an f'ing sniper' controversy affected reviews"
/fixed
/fixed
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 7:04PM finnith said
I'm thinking that the Bad Company series is at its end at this point. I believe Battlefield 3 is coming out on consoles as well as PC, while Medal of Honor is a license that EA is unlikely to discontinue (again). Battlefield 3 will be large-scale battles (I think 64 player on consoles and 80 on PC) whilie MoH will showcase smaller maps with the Combat Mission and Team Assault gametypes. Having another Bad Company game that takes up space in between these two subgenres would be unnecessary, not to mention an overextension of DICE's ability to put out games.
I actually didn't mind the MoH multiplayer. Mostly because my reflexes aren't good enough for the twitch reflexes required for CoD. I like the idea of defensive rewards too, but I'd like to see the breakdown of how many people took the offensive pointstreak awards and how many people took the defensive ones.
I actually didn't mind the MoH multiplayer. Mostly because my reflexes aren't good enough for the twitch reflexes required for CoD. I like the idea of defensive rewards too, but I'd like to see the breakdown of how many people took the offensive pointstreak awards and how many people took the defensive ones.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 7:51PM Lerkero said
Worrying more about the controversy of the "Taliban" rather than the mechanics of the game shows the dev teams were focusing on the wrong things while making this game.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 10:17PM honkyjesusownsu said
@Lerkero
Agreed, an average game is an average game. Unless you are Rockstar you are getting poor reviews for it.
Reply
Agreed, an average game is an average game. Unless you are Rockstar you are getting poor reviews for it.
Posted: Nov 5th 2010 11:22PM Dawg605 said
Excuses, excuses, excuses. Sorry EA, the game just isn't that good. Stop being sore losers.
Posted: Nov 6th 2010 4:15AM tripleWRECK said
MoH had solid SP but the MP was forgettable due to it not bringing anything new to the table to distinguish itself from CoD. Having DICE in the development wasn't a great choice IMO, MoH wound of feeling too much like BF and I think it suffered because of that.
I'm hoping the next MoH is developed by someone different and innovates a little more. Some more polish couldn't hurt either.
I'm hoping the next MoH is developed by someone different and innovates a little more. Some more polish couldn't hurt either.
Posted: Nov 6th 2010 5:42PM JoshMilewski said
Poor damage control, DICE.
Posted: Nov 7th 2010 11:28AM Kade Storm said
Poor damage control indeed.
Just taking the general gist of the comments all over the web, it becomes evident that majority of the audience don't care about the 'terrorism' facet of the plot. Political sensitivities had squat to do with the general reception this game has received. They're pissed off about the look, feel, and potential mediocrity of the game.
Just taking the general gist of the comments all over the web, it becomes evident that majority of the audience don't care about the 'terrorism' facet of the plot. Political sensitivities had squat to do with the general reception this game has received. They're pissed off about the look, feel, and potential mediocrity of the game.
Posted: Nov 7th 2010 4:25PM MisterApathy said
The only thing Medal of Honor did well was bullets felt more punchy, the game itself was generic FPS the whole way through, like they copy/pasted scenes from a bunch of other games, slapped on a beard and some crap Tier 1 bullshit and called it a day
Posted: Nov 7th 2010 4:26PM MisterApathy said
After playing Black Ops this weekend, I think maybe I am jaded against the whole thing lately though, since Black Ops was MORE generic bullcrap
Posted: Nov 8th 2010 8:28AM Jonthomasdesigns said
Maybe a 5-6 Hr $60 game could have had something to do with it .. I rented it so i loved the game , the story was intense and fun , multiplayer was interesting .. but when you are shelling out $60 for a 1-2 day experience that is lame







