And More: Deals and Sales - Up To 75% Off Games at EA/Origin (Battlefield, Sims, Dragon Age Series' and More) [Notification]

I am currently working on finishing a post about Diablo II and I feel a little weird putting out two posts about sales from the same company/place back-to-back, but I wanted to quickly notify others about a great sale happening at EA/Origin right now:

I haven't been surfing around a lot lately so I'm not sure what's going on out there for them to 'tie' this sale 'into', but a great sale is happening at EA/Origin...


Want Battlefield 4? It's five dollars.

Maybe you want to try the newer Battlefield: Hardline? Standard Edition is now five dollars.

Perhaps you want to go back a bit and play Battlefield 3? It's five dollars.

Or maybe Battlefield: Bad Company 2? It's also five dollars.

How about Star Wars: Battlefront? It's twenty dollars.

Want to settle back and play some Sims 4? It's four dollars more at twenty-four dollars.

Never played the Crysis series? 1, 2 and 3 together, is one dollar more at twenty-five dollars.

What about the Mass Effect Trilogy (games 1-3)? It is a little less, at fifteen dollars.

Want to play the classic building game Simcity (2013 version)? It is only five dollars.

If you've never played Plants vs Zombies, it is less than two dollars, right now.

How about medieval adventuring in Dragon Age: Inquisition? It is ten dollars during this sale.

[I'm saying "dollars" so much, the word is looking weird and losing all meaning to me now] 


I feel like I'm in an alternate universe. This is a crazy sale. It's making me crazy. Did they hire Steam's Marketing Department? What the hell is going on?

Hmm... I think I'll call this the "What The Hell Is Going On Sale"...



Personal Reaction To This Sale:

Let's see... what to get...?

Picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition for ten bucks - woot!

Hmm.. I own almost all of the Battlefield Games... maybe Battlefield: Vietnam? I only played that a little when it was free to play for a weekend once, but I liked it... Star Wars: Battlefront? Hmm, I heard it doesn't have a Single Player storyline gameplay.. only online against other people? No thanks... 
I mean, I played the heck out of Unreal Tournament (1999) but I practiced/learned with bots first (which I don't think Battlefront-2015 has), and at the time I was playing at LAN parties with my workplace/co-workers sometimes, where we would all cart our computers to one guy's house and hook them all up and play UT all night (for good performance, since it was only Dial-up at the time)... Good times, but while I do play Planetside 2 and other online-only Multiplayer First-Person Shooters, now I enjoy Single Player games a lot more... nah, skip it for now - sorry EA I want a Single Player portion (like Battlefield 3 and 4 and the much-aligned-but-I-liked-it Battlefield: Hardline)...



[Edit: After looking around a bit, I see that this past weekend was E3-2016 - ahh that's one reason for this sale, possibly]


[Personal Note: I am not affiliated with EA or Origin or any related companies of theirs, nor do I get any credit or monetary returns on linking or telling people about these (things like "referrals", look in the links, there are none); I am merely a gamer who likes gaming and (when I can) sharing gaming info with other gamers about gaming and gamer gaming games gamegamergamelolimtired]

Quick Tip: The Sims 3 - Game Recording Is Slightly Darker Than The 'Normal' Colours Of Regular Gameplay [FIX]

Just a Quick Tip for those of you recording The Sims 3 and finding that your videos are looking 'darker' than the original gameplay itself - a problem that has been around for some people for over a year now... It's not that the game isn't recordable (although for some people they got nothing but 'blank/black screens' a few years ago) it's that the recordings are coming out, what looks like, a few shades darker than what the game really is.
I was recently seeing a spike in the number of people talking about this problem again and decided to see if I could find a fix, or at least a workaround, for it; and what I found was something that everyone can do for now (at least until AMD/NVIDIA or Maxis/EA makes an update that fully fixes the issue) and that is simply: to run The Sims 3 in Windowed Mode.

Whether you are using Dxtory, Bandicam, Afterburner or most other game recording programs (even NVIDIA's Shadowplay has the same issue for some people), the fix [more of a workaround] that I found for now at least allows you to record your Sims 3 gameplay with proper colours, as you can see in these frames extracted from a couple of game recordings, below:

Comparison between the display modes and the colours when recording (Darker vs. 'Normal') for the recording issue with The Sims 3, showing that the workaround works [at least for now] in two extracted frames from two game recordings (one in Windowed Mode and one in Fullscreen Mode). [In the right half, the camera has been 'zoomed in']

Have fun recording your Sims 3 gameplay once again, if this problem has made you stop - and
See You In The Games!