MLB 2K7 — The Three Year Plan — The $60 Price Tag
Ya know, I understand that MLB 2K6 was broken all to hell. I said as much last year along with many others (I was raked over the coals, along with Bill Harris, for publicly slamming that piece of shit game). And it was, and still is, a piece of shit game. MLB 2K6 was the worst 2K Sports game released in years — and I consider myself a 2K fan for the most part.
I also understand that the game is now on some sort of ‘three year plan’ in order to fix it.
And oh — it needs a fixin’.
In fairness, the game on the field is MUCH better. I hate the camera angles and I really hate the fielding model. I also agree with Dan — why does baserunning have to be so convoluted? The game does need slider adustments as out of the box balls fly out of the park like bottlerockets fired inside Coors Field. Yes, there is wacky managerial AI — I dunno why this game still has such a time dealing with pitchers (when to pull them, when to hit for them, etc.) Still, with all of that, it’s a better game and I’m having fun playing it, warts and all.
Definitely better. In fact, almost great.
If you’re a franchise mode guy, well, it’s still crap. Utter crap. Insane CPU GMs, players not being inserted into lineups, busted player progression — it’s the same song and dance as last year’s game. This goes back to the whole three year deal. I get short dev cycles. I get the fact that sports developers are overworked and can only do so much on a yearly basis. I’ve been complaining about that for years. There is just no way to fix everything and still add new features to please the masses in such a short time. Impossible.
Sports games, as much as I enjoy them (some of them) remain the #1 rip off in the entire gaming industry. Hands down. Bar none. Without question. A 10 month development cycle for a “new” game is a fool’s errand. But you already know that. Sports games are money makers, but the time that is needed to really innovate..well..it’s just not there. It’s why we practically get the same games every year.
MLB 2K6 was vastly overpriced. MLB 2K7, although a much better game, has broken features — and 2K knows it. They told you as much before it was released. It’s going to take time to fix this game. I guess three year’s time.
What do you do in the meantime, though? 2K wants you to pay $60 for a game that is 1/3 of the vision of the development team. I think it should be $20. It’s 1/3 of the game, why not 1/3 of the price?
The level of enjoyment a person gets out of a game is a matter of what they want from it — do you care about franchise mode? Not everyone does. Are you a 100% online guy? I think these are fair questions. You may get MLB 2K7 and fall head over heels in love with it. But it still smells like price gouging to me.
From a developer’s point of view, I agree with what they are doing — you have to fix gameplay and add bells and/or whistles before fixing a sports game’s franchise mode. But I think they should have completely removed franchise mode from the game. Completely. I mean — they know it’s busted. If they’re serious about this three year thing, why still advertise franchise mode as a selling point when you know that it doesn’t work right?
March 1st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Yeah, I’ve felt a lot of empathy for the “annual sports games are a ripoff” argument. But then I check out a site like 360voice.com and look at my most played titles, and it shocks me how many hours of gameplay I seem to get out of even middling sports titles compared to what I’d consider my triple-A games from other genres. NCAA Football ‘07 and NBA 2K7 trumped games like Oblivion and Dead Rising in playtime, and it feels like I’ve played those last two games a TON. I don’t even like NBA 2K7 that much! MLB 2K7 has its problems, but there’s so much about it that excites me that the deficiencies are overshadowed… in part because I realize more and more how futile Franchise modes are for me, and that I’m better suited to trying different teams in season mode and other modes that require less commitment. So yeah, there are some headscratching things, and it feels wrong to pay full price for a ‘first draft’, so to speak, when it all shakes down, I’ll probably get more value from this than many other games that are spared such criticisms.
March 1st, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Well said seth
March 1st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
i bitch about franchise bugs and player progression etc. then i sit and think about how many games i’ve actually devoted enough time to to play out more than one or two seasons - the answer? two - mvp2005 only because it’s been out for two plus years and ncaa2007 because i love college football so much.
mlb2k7 is fun - it has a ton of sliders that apparently are very sensitive and actually work - and it looks great. the lineup thing is a little disconcerting but again it’s not going to affect me hardly at all the way i play.
March 1st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
I think it’s *all* about how you play them. I played 20 seasons (roughly) of High Heat 2002. That was playing 1 game of each series. I’d play 1 game of a 3 game set, etc.
I think I went for 10 seasons in NCAA 04. I think. It was at least 8.
Tht thing is, for me, when playing a baseball game I play as the Reds. The Reds need time to be turned into a championship team. In a football game –I’m the Browns. Same deal. I need a few years to get a roster in order. I don’t want to play as the Patriots.
I rarely, if ever, play every game of every season. I do a lot of playing and a lot of simming so I can get to the rollover needed to make a franchise mode worthwhile.
In this game, I think you can have a lot of fun playing a single season, but when you start to adbvance the years, I think the game is still pretty much broken.
Again, whether or not that’s a problem is a personal thing. But the franchise mode is a heafy bit of code, too. It’s a pretty big part of the game and for it to be busted, knowingly, and for the game to still run $60, I think is BS.
March 1st, 2007 at 6:15 pm
The annoying thing is that it takes so little work to fix those sorts of Franchise mode problems. A month of one designer and one programmer’s time would be more than enough to make it near-flawless if they were smart.
As it is, I’m not really sold on 2KSports’ promotion of their new designer as the magic cure-all for the series. I’ve never liked it when companies promote their designers like rock stars, although it was kinda funny to see people parrot the “OMG they have Brinkman! Now the game will be great!” message from 2KSports.
As far the hours of entertainment for the price, I don’t think that way at all. Sports games are supposed to have high replay value. They also are weaker than other types of games in some areas. So judging their value by time spent on them alone doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t value double cheeseburgers at McDonald’s highly just because they fill me up for a week for the same price as a single meal at a nice restaurant. Instead, I compare a sports game to what I think are my reasonable expectations for the quality of the game.
There’s always next year…
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:36 am
Am I the only one who thinks it is incredibly hard to tell a ball from a strike in this game? Zoomed in, zoomed out…it’s friggin impossible.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:36 am
Unless the ball is well inside or outside, I have little chance of reading it. I thought about turning down pitch speed, but I’m going to give it a little more time.
I really miss the feature, from World Series Baseball, that left a marker for previous pitch locations - from the last at-bat, I believe. And this game doesn’t even leave a marker for more than a second. I also can’t figure out how to see a replay of a pitch to know where it ended up, how it broke, etc. Is that possible?
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
supes…I have pitch speed down to *30* and Zambrano fanned me 12 times this morning.
I dunno what it is, but I cannot hit for shit yet and I’m really struggling determining pitches at this point.
And yeah Neil..you’ll never get me to understand why/how just putting a band-aide on franchise mode would have required an entire re-write. It’s the same issues from 2K6 for the most part.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:48 am
you have to swing waaaaaay to early in this game - way earlier than any game i’ve played before