I paid $90 for Battlefield 1. I don’t do this very often, hardly ever, as paying full price for new releases is not always the best idea, but some friends and I decided to get it. Past that, I kept seeing promotions for EA’s Origin Access, which offers a $5 subscription to access a variety of previously released titles. Upon checking the catalogue, the excellent value of this subscription became very apparent. The games in front of me included all EA games available on Origin, minus the releases in 2016. Not only that, but some titles are available with Deluxe or Premium Editions, such as Battlefield 4. I then subscribed to the service and came to enjoy the benefits of running my games off a subscription. All of the available games are not just simply streamed from the internet, they can easily be downloaded and accessed in their full form.

The Origin Access subscription costs only $5 a month, and allows for unlimited access to many of EA’s games. The catalogue offers many triple A titles: Star Wars: Battlefront; Need for Speed: Deluxe Edition; Mass Effect 2 & 3 Deluxe Editions, Battlefield 4 and Hardline Premium Editions, and many other games from the Origin back catalogue. Any non-EA titles offered on the Origin store are missing, but that is acceptable considering the already sizeable offer. Furthermore, as long as you keep paying $5/month, all the “Vault” games can be downloaded and accessed anytime, and to sweeten the deal, they can be played with no time restrictions. New titles are mixed in with old, and the majority of EA’s franchises are all accounted for. The present Origin game vault is missing Medal of Honour and Command & Conquer, but those won’t be asked for by many. Still, the library is consistently growing, and just recently witnessed the addition of Star Wars: Battlefront, so more titles from EA’s back catalogue may follow in the future.

Considering that many of the available games are sold for $20 or more, Origin Access really demonstrates improvement on EA’s side. Its just a $5/month subscription, but offers so much more for acquiring it. EA comes to be the first to offer this type of service on PC gaming distribution platforms, and successfully demonstrates the value of a subscription. It can be thought of just like Xbox Live to average out for $60/year and it provides a great service for gamers on a strict budget. Origin Access allows to enjoy many quality releases at the price of an indie game, and offers a considerably more valuable option.

Despite the many issues that Origin had as a distribution platform over the years since its introduction, EA has taken long steps to fix most of its outstanding issues and managed to throw together a great proposition of a subscription service. Origin Access is priced considerably lower than the majority of the games that come with it, and all of them can be played through in full at no restriction. EA makes far progress into fixing its distribution service, and already works considerably better than uPlay. Origin Access just sweetens the deal further, and based on the amount of fun I’ve had with only 1 of the many games available on the platform, I would recommend getting this subscription for anyone. Its already demonstrated its value to me, and I barely even touched the surface with only Star Wars: Battlefront and Need for Speed downloaded so far.