Tuesday night notes
- Man, this Brewers team is starting to scare me. Through the first 5 innings, they had 1 base runner and were down 3 to nothing. In the 7th, 8th, and 9th they managed to scratch out enough runs to get a 4-3 win. That was a game I couldn’t have imagined them winning a few weeks ago. They just seem to be clicking right now. With CC and Sheets on the mound for the next two days, things look good for the series against the Cards. If they can split the last two, that’s a 6-1 road trip and a great way to make up some ground on the Cubs.
- I’ve gotten through 2 tournament rounds and 2 match play rounds of We Love Golf and my impressions are very mixed. In the beginning the controls seemed really odd, but after spending an hour or two with the game, I’m finding that they make more sense. For example, if you’re going to put backspin or topspin on the ball, you need to hold the remote with two hands. At that point it feels like a much more natural golf swing. Still not as comfortable as Wii Sports Golf did, but it’s just a different swing.
The one thing that I’m a bit worried about with the game, and have been told gets better as the game goes along, has to do with the difficulty. Here are my stats for the first two tournament rounds.
18 holes …. -15 under
18 holes …. -14 under
Add that to the fact that my two match play matchups haven’t gone past the 11th hole and you have something to worry about where the game challenge is concerned.
Typically, I wouldn’t have a problem with a game that starts off a bit easy, but holy crap is it simple in the beginning. I’m knocking down 30+ foot putts without any problems at all, and anything inside 10 feet (at least at this stage) is a gimmie.
I’ll put a bit more time into it as I’d like to unlock a few of the special characters, but I just don’t know how long I’ll stay interested in the game if it’s this easy.
Oh, and all of this is without mentioning the annoying voice that comes from your Wii Remote. I’d give anything to know a way to turn that off. There is a little dancing Wii Remote on the screen that is your guide for the game and it could drive me to drink before all is said and done.
- I’m glad that we’ve had a good discussion going in the comments over the last day regarding NCAA Football 09. I think we’ve just touched on some of the major issues that the game has at this point. Bill Harris is doing a much better job of detailing the really big problems with the game engine. Things that go beyond mere bugs and enter into real game flaws. Oh, and as far as stating your opinion, Loren, keep going man. Don’t think you’re talking to a wall here. I’ve been known to change my stance on certain things if I get enough evidence to make me waver… although this one could be a tough one for you to work on.
- As far as Forza goes, I wasn’t complaining about the game. It’s very challenging and that’s what I expected it to be. The loading time for the first track was over a minute. They got better after that… so I’m just not sure what the deal was there. No biggy.
- For those of you that aren’t on the Gametap bandwagon, today they announced that THQ is coming on board. So, you’ll be able to get your fill of Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40k, Titan Quest, and the upcoming Saints Row II. I’d be more happy about this if I didn’t own all of those titles (damnit.) Still, another good reason to subscribe to Gametap. I’ve been a customer for almost 2 years now and haven’t regretted it for a minute. Oooh, and Fallout comes out this week. Giddyup.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:12 am
I played We Love Golf last night as well and man, these controls are really bugging the crap out of me. The lack of precision when trying to stop the swing at the right point on the power curve made for some really crappy putts. Even with that though, I only gave up one hole in my match play round. Why they couldn’t stick with more basic controls is beyond me. I’ll have to spend some time in the tutorial to make sure I’m doing everything correctly.
Also, there’s just way too much stuff on the screen at once. I feel like I’m going to have a seizure.
I hate the Wiimote voice too. If you press the Home button while in the game, you can lower the Wiimote speaker volume. I haven’t done it, but will be giving it a try.
Have you tried any online games? I tried to connect last night and gave up after several minutes without finding a match. My Wii’s network connectivity was working like a champ with the Internet Channel, so I know that it’s working, it’s just that no one was playing.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
I have not tried out the Online mode to this point. I would be more than happy to try and get in an online game with you though in the next few days. Just drop me an email.
I will have to remember to turn down the Wii Remote volume. I just can’t believe there isn’t an option menu in the game to do so.
I’ve only had a few putts go wrong due to wonky controls.
If you take a nice relaxing swing backward and then follow through quickly, you can get the timing down for stopping to be relatively accurate. It’s not a perfect control method… that’s for sure… but I still find it enjoyable.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:25 pm
On the topic of NCAA…
I think, in the past 10 years or so, EA has brought a lot of this frustration, from the sports gamers, on themselves in really two significant ways. Limited QA and exclusive licenses.
The short development cycle is well documented, but I think limited QA is a serious problem. Now that sounds like a duh statement, but I think the true QA problem is really within management. In no way do I think the QA testers aren’t hard workers and I believe they probably noted almost all of the issues we are so worked up about. The problem is with mangament and the term “Shippable Bugs”. When I spent a summer doing QA for EA, a little over 10 years ago, “Shippable Bugs” was a term thrown around quite a bit. Now all software products will have bugs you just ship because you can’t fix everything, in a timely manner, and some bugs are insignificant and can be addressed later…others aren’t inisignificant. As we got closer to our release date, now this was 10 years ago when the Madden dev cycle was a little longer, we would define which bugs were shippable and which weren’t. At that time there was a willingness to delay a product if not all unshippable bugs were fixed. It seems now that the definition has gotten looser and looser within EA management. In reality the Marketing department at EA probably has significantly more say over when a product ships than the QA department does.
My second argument over why we sports gamers are so worked up is the exclusive licenses. It is true that these games are aimed at the 98% of buyers who are just wanting to play an explosive scoring game with their buddies, so they can raz each other. And why not, EA sports games were built on the foundation of being where you went for an action sports game as opposed to a game with depth and longevity beyond the last game you played. As sports gamers that was fine with us. We knew that we could play Front Page Sports Football or High Heat or NASCAR from papyrus if we wanted a simulation. Once they started buying up licenses, the competition was eliminated. By purchasing those licenses they took on the responsibility, whether they intended to or not, to provide the functionality that other games provided us gamers. This is why us sim/dynasty gamers get so frustrated with EA. They aren’t interested in properly addressing the features we want which were provided by the competition they eliminated. It would probably be better if they just released a game that only played a quick game of football and admitted “this is what we do best and all that we are going to do”. Adding the sim and dynasty features w/o putting a real effort to get it right, when EA’s real intent is to deliver a fast-action game, is just rubbing salt in the wound of us sim/dynasty players.
Put the two together and you have the current state of sports gaming. Marketing controllers when a product goes out, irregardless of the state, and exclusive licenses ensure there is nowhere else to turn to if we are unhappy with the product.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
The Yanks are rolling, too.