Tuesday night notes
- I sent in the questions that were emailed to me and posted in the comments section to 2K sports, regarding Top Spin. I’m very anxious to participate in the conference call this Thursday afternoon. Thanks again to everyone who sent in comments.
- I have to say that I know where Dan was coming from with his comments today. I consider myself very lucky to have been given the opportunity to write for the blog and I think in the last year we’ve made a lot of positive changes for the site and have worked very hard on it.
One of the things that is a big challenge is balancing our lives with the site. I reschedule work and child care to attend conference calls and set up interviews with developers and take quite a few hours of my spare time to work on site development and on going site work, but I would never complain about it for a minute, as I love working on the site and doing what we do here.
Writing about sports gaming has become a big challenge over the past few years though, as there are just not as many sports games as their have been in the past. Basically we’re down to a few genres, text-based PC sports games and console games. I would have to say that about 15 to 20 console sports games are released for the major sports each year (Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, and splash in some Tennis and racing titles.) That really isn’t a ton of things to cover for an entire year. We do cover the text-based games as well, but when we do, we don’t really hear much from you about them.
Like it or not, the sports gaming genre is changing a great deal, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be expanding for the ‘hardcore sports fan.’ Dan and I play lots of games, and while sports games dominate my library, I do have to say that if I only played sports games for an entire year, I’d lose my mind.
Having said that, the best games that I’ve played this year have all been sports games. NHL08, MLB Power Pros, PYS4 and 5… all have been superlative. I’ve had more “Holy crap, did that just happen?” moments in those games than I have with the huge hype titles like Rock Band or GTA4, but I guess that’s just the gamer that I am.
I guess that’s the end of my rant. Maybe… I guess when Dan and I get around to the next podcast there may be more. heh.
- Speaking of sports games, I got back into my RTTS career in The Show over the last few days and I got the call up to AAA for the Brewers. There are a few things about the mode that are starting to annoy me after 40 or 50 games.
1. It’s incredibly difficult to make good base running decisions. You just can’t see the ball off of the bat well, and when you do… it’s really hard to work the camera to see what your coach is telling you to do. More often than not they just stand there and that gets old. I did find a bug for the 3rd base coach earlier tonight as well. There were 2 outs and I was on second, there was a grounder to 2nd and he told me to hold up at 3rd. Can anyone think of a reason to do that?
2. The in game goals are sometimes very annoying, the hit and run is a real pain in the ass. One pitch, if you foul it off, you fail. If it’s an eye high fastball, you hack at it and you fail. Also, I’ve never seen my coaches call for anything other than a hit and run, maybe they just know that I can’t bunt for crap. Of course, I’m hitting .420 at AAA, so I guess they want me swinging.
Oh, well… that’s enough for tonight.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Sure, lets say you are n second and there is a grounder to second….in real life, a player wouldn’t necessarily “Hold,” but it wouldn’t be smart to make the turn and go all out sprinting for home….what if the hitter beats the throw to first or maybe the first baseman juggles it. Well the hitter would be safe and if you had made the turn and sprinted towards home, there is a good chance you’ll be thrown out by 20 feet.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:55 am
What a player would probably do in real life is make the turn and go about 1\3 of the way towards home and watch the play develop. If there is a major error like the second baseman overthrowing first then he walks in to score. If somehow the hitter beats it out or the first baseman bobbles it and he doesn’t feel he can score then you have first and third.