The Blog for the Sports Gamer

Saw this over at the Xbox Live news page:

NASCAR driver Kyle Busch is revving up to race with Xbox Live™ members! What’s the game? NASCAR® 2005: Chase for the Cup™, of course.Kyle Busch will be playing on Xbox Live from 2:00 to 3:00 P.M. Eastern/11:00 A.M. to noon Pacific on Wednesday, March 2, 2005. Look for the Gamertag KB5Grrreeat

Which leads to the burning question…..do all NASCAR fans not work during the day? I know I work during the day!!! 2PM! I mean…in the words of Rob Corddry….COME ON!

I saw the first in-depth MLB 2006 review over at Bill’s haunt, GameSpy. I could have used a little more depth about the league options and online gaming, but the description of the pitcher/batter interface has me excited. Sony says it’s out tomorrow, EB says it ships 3/8, GameStop says 3/1.

Even though we’re are going to get yet another @#$@#%^ing “Superstorm” tonight/tomorrow, I’m still going to see if I can get this game tomorrow. I bet everything is closed. Things like “heavy snow causing visibility to be reduced to below 1/4 mile” doesn’t sound like many stores will be open, but hey, it’s worth a shot.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, Ubisoft has bought the assets of Microsoft Sports games, including Rivals, Fever, Inside Drive and Inside Pitch.

Unfortunately, no other news was provided in the press release, except they signed Vijay Singh. I’m confused though. It doesn’t look like they got Links, but the only official spokesperson is for a golf game? HUH?

Also, no news on whether or not Ubi acquired the High Heat code/trademarks. Now, if EA buys Ubisoft, can they release their own NFL games? I guess High Heat is moot because they can’t do a baseball game…or can they? I mean, since it’s first party code, could they release baseball?

Very unusual indeed……oh well, I’m sure having NHL Rivals will give them the edge they need to avoid being bought by EA. Not. And why didn’t they get the rights to Microsoft Soccer?

This morning I put on Good Morning America, to see the latest news. I put on CNN.com as well. On CNN the top article was 125 die in Iraq in a single bomb. On GMA, the biggest news was it was a million dollar night for million dollar baby! So to recap: boxing movie > biggest car bomb in Iraq with the most deaths. Nice job, Good Morning America!

Okay, so I played a couple of ranked games of MVP today. Went 1-1. Game went fine, but there was an issue. The CPU did the warming up of the players, even did the substitutions. Is there a way around this or is this the way it has to be for a ranked game? I’ve gone through the options I thought pre-game and didn’t see a way to change this……you have to have a 5 inning game too for a ranking…ugh..

My friends know me as a guy who loves sports games, but hates the sports game media. Actually, it’s really the reason I started reviewing games back in 1996. I remember reading sports reviews at OGR and Gamecenter and thinking, “these guys are friggin’ incompetent .” It really burned me when I emailed an editor at Gamecenter with no less than 5 flat out lies in a review of a college basketball game (the one made by High Voltage back in the 90s.) This guy, an EDITOR, said in his review that the game had a mode that allowed “continuous seasons.” This was bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. His reply to me was, “thanks for reading Gamecenter. Don’t forget to use our feedback page!” Thanks to that dumb ass editor, I’m here today talking to you about sports games.

Once getting into the industry, I learned that most reviewers are nice fellas — E3 is always a fun place to catch up with fellow media hounds and there are sports game writers that I trust as much as I do my own opinion. (Brett Todd (usually), Jeff Lackey, Rob Smolka back in the day among a few others. Not Dan. He’s an idiot.)

However, after spending time with sports game writers (some, not all) but after speaking with them for 5 minutes about sports it hits you that they shouldn’t be allowed within a police line’s length from a sports game, let alone from a sports game and a word processor.

I bring this up to you today because I’ve been playing ESPN 2K5 a hell of a lot the past few days, getting my CGM review in order. No matter how you slice it or spin it, this game is a bug riddled mess. There’s the wild pitch/passed ball snafu, night game bugs, lineup/roster bugs, player creation bugs, sound bugs, AI glitches, a craptacular camera system, more line outs than ground outs, SAC bunt issues, pitcher fatigue issues — and on and on. Some of these issues you aren’t going to see unless you..well..actually play the game for more than an hour.

I go to Gamerankings and see that the game has an 85% overall based on the reviews. 85%. ESPN 2K5 deserves an 85 only if that’s out of 200. I’ll sum up the reviews by quoting the review at Team Xbox:

Just about every aspect of MLB 2K5 is better than last year’s offering, which was outclassed by the competition. Kush Games knew they would have to come into 2005 with a barrel of steam and no intentions of sliding, which is exactly they did. A few of the quirks from last year’s game that haven’t been touched in MLB 2K5, however, may kick up a cloud of dust for gamers waiting to make the call. This is a must-rent for any hardball fan, and will probably be the sports title to play online until the next generation of hardware ships.

I think that says it all.

I just took a look at IGN. They gave MVP a 9.2 and ESPN an 8.5. I don’t even think it’s that close. Look at this quote:

Last year’s game felt sloppy, but this year MLB 2K is back on track. There stil some serious issues, particularly with AI, but overall this is a much more enjoyable rendition. It’s not perfect, but what is (besides me)?

Well, that sounds like an 8.5 to me! Serious issues, but an 8.5? And of course, gotta get that nice little ego thing in there. And how about the editing of that review? Sure I can see a fan site missing it but how does a sentence like “There stil (sic) some serious issues..” get published? And no, you’re not perfect.

In other news, I see that Gran Turismo 4 is getting widespread priase. You know what I don’t get — mind you I haven’t played the game — but this seems to me to be one of those games that automatically gets a 9 even if you haven’t played it. Folks, I don’t care how shiny the car looks — not having an online feature in this day and age automatically loses a point in my book. I have to say, this serious racing sim has a lot of fans, but every time I’ve played it..since Gt on the PS1…I just can’t get into it. Boring is a word that comes to mind. NASCAR for the PC by Papy is at least enjoyable, albeit very difficult — same with Grand Prix Legends..so there. And yes, I bitch a lot.

More blog news. Believe it or not, this isn’t the only sports gaming blog out there. GameSpot Sports now has a blog as well. I was floored to see this post that says MVP 2005 is not as good as MVP 2004.

This is a prime example of a decent but buggy game in 2004 that rather than ‘rebuild it from the ground up’ they fixed things and made it a much better game. I cannot imagine picking MVP 04 over MVP 05. On the other hand, I can imagine picking ESPN MLB 2K4 over MLB 2K5 in a heartbeat.

Writers like myself usually complain in a review if it’s a ‘more of the same’ game. But I review each case differently. Again, not having played GT4, I can’t really give first hand analysis of it, but reading the reviews, it sounds like it’s more of the same. A racing game with 600 cars instead of 300 cars with the same driving model but pretty graphics doesn’t do it for me. A baseball game with more refined gameplay and more of the same does do it for me, especially if the box scores were right . That’s my opinion. You know what you’re getting with me, I’m up front about it even if I flip flop. . Your mileage may vary elsewhere.

In the words of Frank Barone …. “HOLY CRAP.” It’s official: ESPN MLB 2K5 for Xbox is an unfinished turd. Kush may mean happy but the only one happy are the people collecting $19.95 for a beta product.

If things aren’t addressed quickly this could be the modern day Front Page Sports Football Pro ’99. This wild pitch thing is just terrible. I too experienced this. It’s downright obscene.

Looking for support, I go into the 2K games forum…and it looks even worse than I thought. I mean sure people are going to post negative to begin, but my god, it took most people 2 freaking days to find things that 30+ QA people missed?

Seroiusly, until this is resolved, I think I’d avoid this one at all costs. Stick with MVP, wait for MLB 2006 or something. Me wonders if they used PC thinking for the Xbox games (ie release an unfinished turd to SELL, then we’ll patch it later)..of course this thinking doesn’t work for PS2 games…and lo and behold, the PS2 game isn’t out yet….just a speculative thought….

Hey guys, I’m going to be writing up notes in both baseball games as I encounter them. Think of the blog as a virtual note pad for my reviews.

I’ve been playing more MVP than ESPN lately. In an earlier post, I complained about the bullpen issue — when you sub a pitcher I thought you couldn’t tell who’s in the bullpen. Good news– you can tell as their position is in blue (ie RHP, CP, etc)..so that’s good.

One thing that’s not so good is the box score. Is it that fucking hard to do this right? I mean High Heat did it right 5 years ago. In my Oak @ Bal game, Sammy Sosa got injured while hitting. I subbed in BJ Suroff. At the game ending Box Score, it should read like this:

S. Sosa rf 3 0 0 0 0 0 .000
–>>>(indent)B. Surhoff rf 1 0 1 0 0 0 1.000

But instead it shows Sosa as batting 4th (correct) but then Surhoff batting 10th. Nice fucking box score. Really effective. Of course I’m the only one that gives a shit, so whatever….gameplay was fun though.

Oh and another thing: is it too freaking hard to have auto save of the MVP profile? When did this become difficult?

Well folks, unless a workaround is found or T2 decides to issue an online patch then ESPN Baseball 2K5 (or MLB 2K5 whatever-the-hell it calls itself now) is a total bust. The gameplay is spotty at times, but with the massive number of sliders available I think you can find a setting that you can enjoy. The problem is wild pitches/pased balls. They PLAGUE this game. I see 3 or 4 per game and always with runners on base. It is absolutely re-friggin-diculous.

Any ESPN fans out there have a solution that fixes this problem? If not, I don’t see how anyone can enjoy this thing in its current state. The passed balls come in bunches. I may not see one for 7 innings but in the 8th I’ll see 4 and they almost always result in a run or two scored. Did any review mention this? Did any Beta Tester see it? How does something like this find its way into the final gold release code of a big budget game?

Come on folks, help me out. How do you fix this? (Play MVP being the most obvious of answers..)

A quick trip to Codejunkies.com shows that someone has already updated the MLB rosters for MVP 2005, and in addition has also updated AAA teams as well. Awesome. This is what the Max Drive is for ladies & gentlemen. For those that don’t know, think of the Max Drive as an upgrade from the old DexDrive of yore.

Instead of putting a memory card into a base, instead you have a USB flash drive formatted for Xbox. You can then use a dongle to upload from the USB flash drive to the Xbox. It’s very cool and well worth it. The Codejunkies.com site is updated quite a bit, quite surprisingly…I’m impressed.

Call me lame, but the pitching and hitting minigames in MVP are quite addictive. I’m not one to recommend a baseball game becuase of min games, but they sure do add to the fun.

In my wholly untested opinion, I’m saying MVP is more fun so far, but I haven’t played any league games yet. Anyone interested in an ESPN MLB league? Post to comments…

PS Codejunkies.com also has ESPN MLB rosters also…

I just took a look over at Operation Sports, I see they’ve now gone “ice” as GameSpot says….it looks more forum oriented, so I guess that’s good. From a professional standpoint I think it’s nice. From a personal standpoint, I see the “UGO” banners and I want to vomit. As you know, UGO was a prior employer for myself and Bill before that. They own the GamePen.com domain.

At the end of my tenure there, let’s just say I was treated like shit. They let a great domain name die and merge into the black hole of advertising that was UGO.com. When Craig and I ran Operation Sports, UGO gave us our first paycheck, ironically when John Cauthen and Digital Sportspage left the UGO network, they swooped in and allowed us to run ad banners for a guaranteed minimum of $300 per month. Granted, I’d kill to get that now. We were on top of the world. They also paid for hosting. Of course, they pulled that pretty quick as traffic increased, making Craig pretty much find a new host daily. It was funny — everytime he went to find a new host with ‘UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH” they would close us down because of our bandwidth.

Even then the agreement wasn’t that great. However, I left OS to start with GamePen. GamePen.com the domain is a UGO property and I knew up front that I would be running it but not own it. I figured it was worth the risk because the brand name had some stature. And it did, at the time, I remember going to E3 2000 with Scott Bedard from GameRankings. It was funny because everyone knew GamePen.com but no one knew GameRankings. Back then, Scott and I had to share a room at the Hollywood Motel 6. Now Scott could buy his own Motel 6. Bastard.

Luckily I’m not bitter. After all, our blog gets more traffic than the GameSpot blog. Nyah Nyah. Of course, I just made that up. I have no idea about the Gamespot traffic.

What the hell was I talking about anyway? Oh UGO. That’s right. All I remember is being told our monthly payment was getting cut back to like $2.36 a month so that Gary Coleman could be paid more. I’m just speculating the money went to Gary. Seroiusly, that was during the internet crash and understandable..but it’s still a shame they killed that domain.

Let’s take a moment to remember all of those wonderful domains that are now dead:
AGN3d.com
gamepen.com
pcsportsgames.com
ga-sports.com
3dfiles.com
3dnews.net
gamecenter.com
pcsportsdaily.com
pcsportsupdate.com
gamehut.com
hothornyamateurs.com

oh wait, how did that last one get in there. I think that was one of Craig’s bookmarks….

Okay, I’m done with memory lane now. Sorry about that. Just had to write something, and it’s partially my blog, dammit.

Hey, how many games aside from the clusterfrick High Heat of yore take more stuff out? This year 2K5 removed 720p support and the ability to save games during the game! How great is that! Awesome!

It’s funny, I was talking to Bill (on ICQ, not real life, I mean come on), and we were both noting the irony of these exclusive situations: specifically, the company getting the exclusive seems to have made the weaker game (MLB 2K5, Madden). This is exactly why you don’t want exclusives. Oh well, guess MLB and the NFL will find that out after the 10 year contracts are over. Oops.

I will say something: I noticed that on MVP 2005 it says at the bottom of the “EA Circle” where the game name is: “For the 2005 season”. One can only wonder if we’ll see EA Sports MVP Baseball 2005 for the 2006 season? Hmmm? No other game has every ‘qualified’ the game for what season — the only other thing I can think of is that EA didn’t want you buying MLB 2006 by Sony…but why go to all that effort for one game on the PlayStation 2? Just seems odd. Total speculation on my part, but it seems to be that leaves open the possiblity of ‘keeping’ it as MVP Baseball 2005 but with additional “season” disks……..I’m just saying….

Well, I took today and yesterday off, and I bought another baseball game today. ESPN MLB. First off, these rosters suck even more than EA. Doug Mintioaoiuzoiueplkajdfpaoisuecz is on the Red Sox, and he’s been gone for some time.

After playing a full 3 INNINGS, this game is curious to me. I’m not sure i like the running model yet, but maybe I shoudl RTFM. The play by play is much better than MVP, that I think I can say quickly as in MVP I think I heard comments repeated in one game.

So far I don’t ‘hate’ either game. So there’s that.

And a follow up to the WoW post earlier. All in fun, that was the idea. Playing MVP for 12 hours a day won’t get you laid either. Just wanted to clear that up.

Quick impressions are rarely useful. So let’s do it!

I played a game on default All Star – Reds vs Pirates. Here is what I saw:

• No walks. Not only that but no count ever reached 3 balls. Wanna throw a strike, you’re throwing a strike.
• The fielding camera is the epitome of dogshit
• The CPU tried to SAC bunt 3 times and laid down pretty good bunts…and I promptly threw out the runner at 2nd base all 3 times.
• More line drive outs to the infield than you should see in a week’s worth of real baseball. Really, it was so much it was noticeable. And they aren’t these rocket line outs; they’re these soft liners that just look weird.
• On default All Star, pitching was way too easy. My first game and Paul Wilson throws 8 innings of shutout baseball? I mean..huh?
• Dan just informed me that Sosa isn’t on Baltimore. That is truly sad. Love that February release! You go Take Two! You go girl! (Ditto for EA)

Sliders might make every one of these issues moot. (And we can always download good rosters when baseball starts…in fucking APRIL.) I haven’t read the OS/DSP impressions of ESPN or MVP so I have no real idea what the buzz is right now. My own personal buzz is that I hope sliders will solve some of these potential issues (it was just one game afterall). But the one game test didn’t blow me away — and this coming from a guy that felt last year’s ESPN game was by far the best of the lot.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the one franchise that a lot of people want to stick around coming out of EA Sports (Ok, I guess I’ll give NCAA another year) gets killed because the one Take Two/Sega/VC game that falls off a cliff is the one that sticks around?