Yesterday, EA announced that it was closing down social games developer Playfish. When contacted by Videogamer, EA refused to comment on the status of Danger Close. The studio has seen a large number of staff leave in the past few months including studio head Greg Goodrich. The official Medal of Honor Twitter hasn’t been updated since February end either.

Responding to Videogamer’s requests, EA Corporate Communications’ Tiffany Steckler stated that, “EA is sharpening its focus to provide games for new platforms and mobile. In some cases, this involves reducing team sizes as we evolve into a more efficient organization. Unfortunately we don’t disclose impact on individual teams or locations.”

This is pretty much a general statement that was also used to comment on Playfish’s closure. Has Danger Close really been shut down? Stay tuned for more details.

However, the mission package was revealed to have four specific things: a GoPro (which is a wearable helmet camera, Medal of Honor Warfighter for Xbox 360 and PS3, Battlefield 3 for both consoles and of course, an invite to the Battlefield 4 Reveal.

First, a few questions: Why in the world would EA send out a GoPro camera? Unless it’s trying to emphasize the whole military theme of the package but we smartphone cameras. And no, we’re not questioning why they sent out copies of Warfighter and BF3. It’s EA – they must have some spare copies lying around.

Regardless, stayed to this year’s GDC to see what the next Battlefield has in store for us.

(Source)

So there you are: EA blatantly admits that they didn’t do a good job on Warfighter (or the series in general).

“I think a key part of this is having the right amount of high-quality production talent. And we didn’t have the quality of leadership we needed to make [Medal of Honor] great. We just have to get the leadership aligned.

“We’re blessed to have more titles than we can do well today. That’s a good problem, frankly. In the long term, we have to make sure we don’t kill those products by trying to do them when we can’t do them well.”

In the meantime, EA will be pouring more effort into Battlefield. Hilleman stated that we might see Medal of Honor return in the future though.

Source: GIBiz

As Polygon reports, Moore said as much during an investor call today. “We struggled with two challenges: the slowdown that impacted the entire sector and poor critical and commercial reception for Medal of Honor Warfighter. Medal of Honor was an obvious miss. The game was solid, but the focus on combat authenticity did not resonate with consumers.

“Critics were polarized and gave the game scores which were, frankly, lower than it deserved…This one is behind us now. We are taking Medal of Honor out of the rotation, and have a plan to bring year-over-year continuity to our shooter offerings.”

Whether this means the franchise is officially over and done with, or simply put on hold, is not totally clear. But we won’t be seeing a new Medal of Honor game for a while, that’s for sure.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter was released last year to a torrent of negative reviews due to its monotonous gameplay, poor design and played out mechanics.

By financial backing I mean, tying up with Tier 1 operatives who hunted Osama Bin Laden and depicting their adventures in the game. This is a DLC map pack though, so you won’t really see a solid mission where you go and attack Bin Laden just like the Seals Team did in real life, however, you do get to visit some exotic locations in this map pack.

You will mostly visit Pakistan here, and the place inside the country where Bin Laden was supposed to be hiding. You can get a general idea of the type of maps you will get here. It is mostly geared for close quarters combat and the designs are quite intriguing as the location is something that not a lot of people have attempted to recreate in their games.

You kind of have an idea of the type of buildings and map designs you can encounter based on past games set in the middle east. It’s very similar here although a bit colourful. I guess when you have a decent budget by a big financial entity like EA, it’s easy to go to town on creating some believable recreations of the place.

There are two maps available for you in this map pack, and both of them are pretty exotic. One is the Darra Gun Market, Pakistan’s flourishing arms bazaar; and the other one is Chitral Compound, a location in the far north of Pakistan. Since I have mentioned above that EA had spent a lot of money in getting ideas for this DLC from the Navy Seals Team 6 Tier 1 operatives, there are a lot of customizations that you will be able to use that the real life soldiers did when executing their mission in Pakistan.

 The base game we explained in our review wasn’t that… well, inspiring, however, considering this is purely for the multiplayer, and if you are still play Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer for some reason, it gives gamers a good replaybility factor and the opportunity to role play some Tier 1 operatives. You know kind of like how when you were a kid you used to shoot imaginary bad guys with a plastic pistol? Pew, pew, pew. However, that also depends on how much you adore the Tier 1 operatives.

Some might say this is a bit of a cheap cash grab by EA, but when you look at it, there’s nothing wrong with recreating a real life environment of an incident that possibly shaped the future.

Both the maps are quite beautifully made, with excellent level design and offer plenty of camping opportunities. That may or may not be a good thing but considering the beautiful locations on offer, which not only look good, but also are quite amazing to play in, vaulting over obstacles and so on.

The visuals are great and I kind of felt that the original game didn’t do it much justice with dull looking environments but these two maps are where the Frostbite 2 engine shows its power with some of the most excellent lighting effects ever seen in a videogame. Yes, that is not an exaggeration at all.

Overall, the map pack isn’t something that will force you to buy the game and play it due to its unique setting, however, if you are still playing the multiplayer, I think this is a pretty good purchase. I kind of feel that there should have been more maps but when you have something that is excellently designed, you can’t really complain.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360.

Players can access two new maps with the Darra Gun Market and Chitral Compound along with six new weapon configurations, 14 new weapon camouflage skins, and 10 new multiplayer ranks. The fact that $1 from each pack sold goes towards helping nonprofit veterans organizations is perhaps the icing on the cake.

The Hunt Map Pack can be picked up for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with the Deluxe Edition of Medal of Honor: Warfighter. More information to purchase it separately for players who already own the game will be incoming.

The theme of both properties is the same though: The hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Of course, the map pack is simply a multiplayer addition that adds two new areas – the Darra Gun Market and Chitral Compound – inspired by Navy Seal Team Six’s mission. Of course, there are also six new weapon configurations, 14 new weapon camouflage skins, and 10 new multiplayer ranks to go with the new maps.

And as if to make sure at least one decent thing comes out of the FPS, EA is donating $1 from every map pack sold to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation up through March 19th 2014 as part of its contribution to Project HONOR, which helps various nonprofit veterans organizations.

Source: News10

Some more so than others with their overall quality (which did nothing to impede their sales); some by the annoying amount of bugs that, weeks after release, still haven’t been cleared up; and some for the most juvenile, inane reasons possible. Oh, and there were those “purists” who found fault with Halo 4 initially but have since come around (regardless, “multiplayer brah!”). Plus, Diablo 3, which makes EA look like a cuddly koala when it comes to dealing with customers (among other issues pre- and post-release).

Let’s start with the inane: Mass Effect 3’s ending controversy. Essentially, gamers were disappointed that Mass Effect 3 didn’t have a cookie cutter, “happy ending”. This, despite Bioware leaving clues throughout the series indicating it would be anything but. Otherwise, Mass Effect 3 is a stellar game, and arguably one that deserves the mantle of “Game of the Year” more than its immediate contenders.

And now on to the guilty ones: Resident Evil 6. Seriously, Capcom? You try to shove every single gameplay aspect and action-packed sequence into the game, with cut scenes after every few seconds, saddle it with a needlessly complicated control scheme, pad the game till it’s fluffier than a fluffer on a seedy 80’s film set, cook up a stupid story that effectively retcons every virus out there while somehow creating one that does it all, and you expect people to buy it? Well, hell, were you right as RE6 shipped 4.5 million copies worldwide three days after release.

Not that they were the only ones to pad their games with weary mechanics and awful pacing, interspersed with ho-hum shooting. Medal of Honor: Warfighter, developed by Danger Close and published by EA, finally showed us what happened when the Call of Duty formula became too stale (honestly though, they didn’t do as great a job as Black Ops 2). Yet somehow, Danger Close created not only a terrible game but one that was worse than RE6. How, in the name of the Lord, do you do THAT?

Surprisingly enough, despite just being released, Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is receiving a fair amount of critical backlash. The game itself has been criticized for an overall lack of fun, despite the attention to detail. Seriously, who saw that coming?

While the there have been some terrible games released in the year, they arguably pale in comparison to the buggy ones. Hitman: Absolution, Assassin’s Creed 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 are some of the worst offenders. Look for the number of fixes on AC3’s recent Thanksgiving patch, and you’ll be shocked to discover just how many things have been fixed for multi-player alone. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 continues the series infamous run of only working on the Xbox 360, delivering near unplayable experiences to both PS3 and PC gamers. Hell, even with fixes, the game looked horrible on PS3, clipping extensively and bugging out to no end. At least Hitman: Absolution’s major crimes were a few clipping bugs and disguises being seen through too quickly. It still delivered an awesome experience in stealth and action – though a lot of critics say otherwise.

Darksiders 2 is perhaps the most intriguing case. Despite being bigger and more expansive than the first game, it didn’t live up to expectations. Truth be told, its multitude of elements just failed to click together – and it turned previous Darksiders fans away with its emphasis on “Zelda meets Prince of Persia meets Devil May Cry”. Not the worst game in the world by a long shot, but still one that fell short in its vision and sales.

There’s not really much to say about Diablo 3. Honestly, nothing at all. We swear.

It’s hard to say which the most disappointing game of the year was (though we know the most forgettable – Final Fantasy XIII-2. Zing!). Nearly every big name disappointed in its own way, whether by design or public backlash. What else can you say but “better luck next year”, “play test your games, please” and “Go away forever, Capcom”?

The failure of such big names coincided with the ever-increased pressure AAA developers are under to deliver. Even if it’s buggy, even in the name of simplifying a major franchise for the masses, even if your fans might not like the ending and even if you’ve really got nothing worthy to deliver, you must ship. Under-deliver or over-deliver – just ship on time and cater to the lowest common denominator. We’ll see how well that pans out in the coming year where many of the big names release in the first half of the year itself.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter is the worst rated game of this year, I mean, there could be more but none can be awful than this. We even mauled it in our review and called it a game that was simply trying to compete with CoD and didn’t have an identity of its own.

Well it seems plenty of people who play EA games expresses the same sentiment. One EA moderator has written a touching letter to the company asking why they are trying to be less innovative and ruining the reputation built among gamers.

His letter is something that most people will agree with so we have posted the entire thing below for you. Michael Pachter, an analyst from Wedbush Morgan, had said that the Medal of Honor brand is most likely irrelevant now.

You’re trying to upbeat the competetion by forcing us to play through “Hollywood” moments that we don’t want, nor do we need. Give us a moving and emotional storyline that we can remember. Characters and faces that we can relate to. That was the true vision of Electronic Arts years ago, not this petty competetion for the best share of the profits.

If you truly want to dethrone Call of Duty and Activision, you’re going to have to listen to your community leaders and let them help you create the best experience possible. Not just for Medal of Honor but for all of your marquee franchises. Forcing us to play a adaptation of the original that’s been riddled with problems, and injected with Hollywood moments (Zero Dark Thirty) like Medal of Honor: Warfighter is not how you garner trust. You’re going to have to prove to us that you will support your own franchises and their development teams regardless of profits. Cutting your losses will only hurt your reputation even further. There are hundreds upon thousands of us fans willing to give you advice if only you were willing to listen instead of trying to only make a profit. We’re not looking for money or fame, we’re merely looking for the quality that Electronic Arts was known for years ago.

I truly hope this message will open the eyes of fans, consumers, and the executives at Electronic Arts alike. Years ago, the catch phrase for Electronic Arts was “Challenge Everything”, today I am challenging you and your teams at Electronic Arts to come together as a team, a buisness, and industry leader to put forth better, more complete experiences for your fans and your consumers to enjoy. I will always remain a true fan of Electronic Arts and Medal of Honor, I only hope that this wont be “Preacher’s” last mission because his story and character is something that I can relate to.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

In this new developer diary, art director Chris Salazar delivers inside access for Medal of Honor Warfighter’s The Hunt Map Pack, which will come the Limited or Deluxe Editions at no extra cos. It features two maps – the Darra Gun Market and Chitral Compound – and is inspired by a certain decade-long hunt for a certain man (fill in the blanks yourself). Salazer takes to explaining the process behind bringing real-world hot-spots to the virtual world. As for the overall shoddy quality of the game? Not much discussion on that.

Stay tuned for more details on the DLC’s release.