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New Games Coming To The Origin Access (PC) and EA Access (Xbox One) Vault


Posted on July 13, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Last year’s street racing focused reboot of the Need For Speed franchise is making its way to both the EA Access vault on Xbox One as well as Origin Access’ game vault on Windows PC this week. The latest NFS title received a mediocre reception – averaging just 66 on Metacritic but surely this won’t stop subscribers from getting at least a few hours of enjoyment out of the title.

Alongside the racer EA’s absolutely adorable Unravel will join the collection on both platforms this week as well. I played the 2-hour trial when that hit EA Access this past February and found that Yarny’s unraveling antics were very captivating. This brand new platformer was so successful in its initial launch that EA greenlit a sequel, and now subscribers to both services can try out the full game for free.

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Another 7 titles will be added to the PC centric Origin Access vault later this summer. Among them are some oldies from Maxis, Bioware and the game that made PopCap a household name, at least for awhile.

Here is the complete list of titles coming to Origin Access later this summer:

  • Plants Vs Zombies
  • Jade Empire
  • Sim City 2000
  • Mini Metro
  • Crysis Trilogy (1, 2 and 3)

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What do you think of these additions to EA’s subscription services? Are they enough to get you to sign up? I signed up for EA Access last year and I’ve got my monies worth out of Titanfall alone. Alongside the free, unlimited access games, EA Access also gives subscribers access to six hour trials for some of EA’s newest games like Star Wars Battlefront. Do you think that we will see Battlefront added to the Origin/EA Access freebie list once the inevitable sequel is announced?


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Unravel Impressions: A Wooly World For Xbox & PlayStation Fans


Posted on February 10, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

When EA unveiled Unravel to the world last year during E3 I wasn’t exactly enthralled with the idea of yet another side scrolling platformer featuring a main character made out of cloth. To be honest, I always kind of pegged that as Sony’s thing and comparisons between Unravel and Little Big Planet are almost inevitable (creation tools aside) given the similarities between the two titles. This past weekend I sat down with the final build of Unravel and played through the first two of the game’s stages. After experiencing part of Yarny’s adventures, I can see what makes this game so unique from its peers.

Mechanically Unravel can easily be described as a physics-based side-scrolling puzzle game but that kind of distilled description does absolutely nothing to convey the sense of wonder, joy and happiness that will swell up inside of you when  the music, art direction, and main character all work in harmony.

Unravel stars the charming Yarny who is a small doll made out of red yarn probably no bigger than the size of your hand. As players traverse the environments the doll slowly leaves behind a single thread of red yarn that trails behind. Managing your amount of yarn is absolutely pivotal to succeeding in the two stages that I got the chance to play. As the material that comprises Yarny begins to literally unravel Yarny’s appearance becomes thinner and thinner until you can no longer travel any further. Thankfully players do have at least trick up their sleeve to help manage the output of yarn – by pressing the left skin our little red friend will pull taught on the yarn tail until there is no more slack, increasing the amount of space you can move.

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Because Yarny is so small the world’s sense of scale a more of a micro scale when compared to other platformers. Things like chairs, seesaws, cupboards and gates are quite the obstacle for our little yarn friend to overcome. This is a game all about environmental puzzles – the game will set you up with all of the tools that you’ll need but it is up to you to put all the pieces together. Yarny might just be heavy enough to tip an empty seesaw when standing on it but the little doll will have to find an apple or another object to weigh down the playset. There is no way to throw items or really attack enemies, instead, gameplay focuses on finding clever ways to your environment while avoiding enemies or tricking them with distractions.

Upon first glance Unravel is a charming game with unique yarn based mechanics like limiting player movement, adding more yarn to our hero with checkpoints and the ability for players to lasso themselves from tree branch to tree branch. Not wanting to spoil what little the initial levels teased me with in terms of story it feels like Unravel is going to spin a narrative that will tug at the heart strings. The developers at ColdWood have taken the time to craft the world that feels interesting, unique and also warm – like visiting an old friend’s house after being away for a long time. After playing the first few levels, you’ll surely be wanting to return to his beautifully colorful world to find all of the secrets that Unravel’s world has to find.

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