EA just fired a massive broadside at Valve’s dominance of the gaming service platform. At least, that’s what most people believed earlier today when it emerged that the company – which has been slowly repairing its reputation for the last few years – no longer listed one of its flagship titles, Crysis 2, on Steam. Speculation waas rife that this meant EA were about to really start pushing their own platform, Origin.

Since then, EA has hotly denied that this was their doing, accusing Valve of delisting the game for breaching new regulations. Basically, it’s because Crytek has a deal with another download service. To make it extra-clear, EA claims Crysis 2′s removal from Steam “was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.”

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In the last few days, in between enjoying the unseasonably sunny weather in this fair capital, I managed to put paid to two games I had been waiting to play for a while: Portal 2 and Crysis 2. As videogames turn more and more toward the cinematic, sequels are less of an anomaly than in earlier years. Actual sequels, that is: not just 30 more levels with some exposition as to why they’ve changed the sprite a bit. No, these are – or aim to be – rather more sophisticated affairs, with arcing narratives and thematic evolution. So let’s see how they did.

This post contains spoilers.

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