Founded by ex-apple employee Trip Hawkins in 1982, Electronic Arts has gone on to be a juggernaut of the gaming industry exemplified by its $5.15 Billion revenue in 2018.
As well as releasing many fantastic new IP’s, EA has been a dominant force in video game tie-ins to popular movie franchises and sports. These include their many Star Wars and Harry Potter games, along with the FIFA and Madden franchises. In recent years, EA has become a symbol of what many gamers think is wrong with the gaming industry; through their yearly sports releases that consistently lack significant improvements, to their heavy focus on microtransactions that led to the infamous Star Wars Battlefront II controversy.
The FIFA series was a pioneer in the rise of modern microtransactions, with its Ultimate Team mode that was the leading contributor to EA’s near $1 Billion microtransaction earnings in the final quarter of 2019. The success of FIFA‘s Ultimate Team has led EA to focus on creating online multiplayer-centric games in recent years.
This direction has disappointed many people, as the company has released some of gaming’s best single-player experiences. This list pays homage to those titles, which often had multiplayer modes, but still maintained fantastic single-player campaigns.
10 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (91)
Before the Call of Duty franchise debuted in 2003, the Medal of Honor series dominated the historical FPS market.
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault puts players in the shoes of a United States Army Ranger and tasks them with completing numerous objective-based missions, including storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. The game was rewarded for its efforts with Computer Gaming World’s Action Game of the Year award, beating titles like Grand Theft Auto III and Hitman 2.
9 SSX Tricky (92)
The second entry in the critically acclaimed SSX series, SSX Tricky was published by EA Sports Big, a label of EA that published extreme sports titles like FIFA Street and NBA Street Showdown.
The game added Uber moves to the series, which rewarded players who filled their boost meter to the max with the chance to do exaggerated tricks. If the player successfully landed six Uber moves, they’d be rewarded with an infinite boost for the rest of the stage.
8 Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (92)
Released in 1999, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri was considered to be a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series, which was two installments deep at the time.
The game plays similarly to the turn-based Civilization II but is accompanied by an intricate science fiction narrative. Alpha Centauri won multiple awards upon release, including Turn-Based Game of the Year from Gamespot and PC Strategy Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
7 Medal of Honor (92)
The first entry in the Medal of Honor series is also the highest rated on Metacritic.
Released in 1999, Medal of Honor revolutionized the FPS genre by centering its gameplay around completing objectives, rather than simply shooting everyone in sight. Moreover, the game set a new standard for storytelling in the genre, with its narrative that was created by Stephen Spielberg.
6 Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! (92)
As the name suggests, Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! takes players to the American Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, and gives them the choice of controlling either the Union or Confederate units.
Much like Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Gettysburg! enjoyed its fair share of awards, including Best Strategy Computer Game of 1997 from the Origins Awards and Best Wargame from GameSpot.
5 SSX (93)
EA Canada and EA Sports Big joined forced in 2000 to create one of the best extreme sports games since Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.
At a time when licensed sports games were booming, EA opted against using real professional snowboarders for SSX and instead offered a selection of charismatic characters that were bursting with personality and perfectly fit the over-the-top SSX gameplay.
4 Mass Effect 3 (93)
The Last of Us Part II of its year, Mass Effect 3 was a surprising source of controversy for its opinion-dividing story that some players said had ruined the beloved series for them. The criticism clearly affected BioWare and EA, as multiple new endings were added to the game after its release.
It’s a shame that the perception of Mass Effect 3 is so negative today, as it finally perfected the series’ combat mechanics, and would almost certainly have been regarded as the best Mass Effect game if its ending was on par with Mass Effect 2‘s Suicide Mission.
3 SSX 3 (93)
The third and final SSX game to appear on this list, SSX 3 improved upon its predecessors by putting the game’s courses in a free-roamable open world.
The newly implemented open-world was likely one of EA’s motivations behind investing in the game’s visual design; with renowned designers like the Oscar-nominated Henry LaBounta joining the art direction team.
2 Burnout 3: Takedown (94)
For some, the extreme racer Burnout 3: Takedown may seem like a dubious inclusion on this list, as they will have spent most of their time with the game’s multiplayer mode. However, the game earns its spot through its Burnout 3 World Tour campaign, which is one of the most enjoyable single-player campaigns in the racing genre’s history.
Like its predecessors, Burnout 3 cared little about realism and instead offered over-the-top arcade fun.
1 Mass Effect 2 (96)
EA’s most critically acclaimed series peaked with its second entry, Mass Effect 2. The game picked up where the first game left off with its excellent, immersive storytelling that added significant weight to each of the player’s interactions.
Although at its surface Mass Effect 2 is a sci-fi shooter, the game truly shines in its character development and personal interactions whose importance didn’t become clear until the shocking final mission.
Fans are hopeful that Bioware and EA will bounce back from the disappointing Andromeda with the upcoming Mass Effect 5, though they would have to produce something special for it to come close to the modern classic Mass Effect 2.
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