The ESPN Baseball 2K5 One Game Test
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?