Electronic Arts, better known as simply EA, has been around for quite some time, longer than many of its biggest fans and harshest critics have been alive. In EA’s nearly 40 years of existence in the video game industry, the company has seen its share of ups and downs, spectacular successes and outright failures, and legions of fans fighting for (and sometimes against) their most famous titles and franchises. But while the overall story of EA is one that’s yet to be fully written, it’s not the focus of this piece. Instead, we took a look at the hundreds (yes,hundreds) of titles that EA is known for in order to bring you a definitive ranking of the Best of the Best
These titles are mostly ones that EA developed and published, but since they’ve also acquired titles for franchise purposes, you’ll see quite a few of those, too; they own them now after all! (Sorry, no DLCs here; stand-alones and sequels only.) For this ranking, rather than go 100% subjective ourselves, we actually crunched the numbers from a variety of other subjective scores. We averaged scores fromMetacritic– including critical Metascore and Metacritic’s user scores –Gamespotcritics' scores, andIMDbuser ratings. Where appropriate, we took the score for the best platform, though clearly there are differences to be found among PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and PC systems, even for the same title. Don’t be surprised to see mostly older, “classic” titles listed below alongside more modern, contemporary, and “popular” games. Your favorite still didn’t make the list? It’s probably because they didn’t crack the 80th percentile of our rating system. (Don’t worry, they may be populatingAmazon’s bestsellers for EA titlesas we speak.)
To give you an idea of how it all stacks up, here are a few titles that didn’t quite make the cut:
Plus, honorable mentions go toCaveman Ugh-lympics(just because it’s one of the first computer games I ever remember playing) and theUltimafranchise, which is so massive and unwieldy as to be nearly impossible to quantify. Got all that? Cool!
So, with no further adieu, here are the 5 Best EA Titles of All Time, followed by more EA titles (in order from best to “worse”) that are worthy of your time and attention. Starting with #1…
1.Mass Effect 2- Average of92
Yep, the numbers don’t lie.Mass Effect 2is the top pick from all of EA’s many titles. And while you may argue over the finer points of this list, this award-winning entry really shouldn’t be a point of contention. It’s a multi-Game-of-the-Year winner, among other accolades, including placement on quite a few “Best Games of All Time” lists.
But here’s where those “finer points” I mentioned come in: You can also callMass Effect 2one of BioWare’s best (if notthebest) title from the developer. And that’s where the distinction lies, because BioWare were indeed the Devs on this one but EA was the publisher. That will be the case for quite a few of the “Best Of” titles below, so it’s probably best to get comfortable with that idea now.
2.Portal- Average of91
Yup, I know.Portalis 100% a Valve game. The company developed and published the award-winning title to much acclaim, so much so thatEA partnered up with themjust a couple of months after the game debuted in order to beef up distribution and bundle the title together with other heavy hitters inThe Orange Boxfor release on the PlayStation 3. EA UK helped develop and distribute that version, with the previous efforts from Valve made for a Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 release. That partnership was so lucrative thatthe two companies teamed up yet againfor another go-round whenPortal 2debuted a few years later. We think that’s more than enough reason to keep this title on EA’s list, even if they don’t own it (or Valve, though they’ve tried) outright.
3.Dragon Age: Origins- Average of91
Another BioWare darling, another hit for publisher EA. Somehow, bothDragon Age: Origins(which tied with #2 in terms of raw score but not in terms of “popularity”, based on the number of reviews) and the overall #1 pick released in less than three months of each other. That’s insane. (And perhaps that creative and productive drain explains whyDragon Age II, released about a year later, was … not so great.) The franchise-launching title acts as a perfect complement to the sci-fi series that started with the originalMass Effect. Both games (and the best titles in their respective franchises) focused on solid storytelling and complex character development and relationships that had fans playing them over and over again. And while some of that magic may have been lost along the way, these core titles remain gems more than a decade later.
4.Diablo- Average of90.5
Aw yeah, we’re going back to the 1990s for this action / hack ‘n’ slash RPG! And yeah, it’s another title that was developed and even originally published for PC by another company (Blizzard Entertainment this time) before EA saw the writing on the wall and decided to get in on the action. EA ported this hit title over to the original PlayStation, and haddesigns to do the same for the Sega Saturn, but that was not to be.Diablo"finally" made it to the consolea little over a year after its PC release, offering evidence that fans and game journalists were as impatient 20+ years ago as they are today (though, to be fair, Blizzard did sell worldwide rights to console versions of the title in 1996, which was well before anyone knew how successfulDiablowould be.)
Despite the history of Blizzard and EA working together, EA doesn’t own Blizzard Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard after a merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, but I understand the confusion. And whatever you make of the current state of both companies, the fact remains thatDiablowas and is a fantastic title that tied the two industry behemoths together in video game history.
5.Half-Life 2- Average of90
The Orange Box rears its lovely head again for the fifth and final spot for EA games that tallied at or above the 90th percentile.Half-Life 2, another Valve / Sierra offering that predatedPortalby three years, gets an extra wrinkle as far as EA is concerned. Their involvement with the Valve title once again arrived about a year after the initial release as EA distributed the Game of the Year edition of the standalone game, in addition to The Orange Box compilation we discussed previously. As for the game, its 30+ Game of the Year awards should speak for itself.
*This title tied, but was more popular overall, based on the sheer number of reviews
Now that the Top 5 are squared away, here are more than 70-odd titles that are the best of the best that EA has had to offer over almost 40 years. (Keep in mind all the caveats we discussed above.) Here they are from best to “worse”, including quite a few of the EA franchise hits you’ve come to know and love:
