Gamestops are destroying ESPN NFL 2k5

I posted this on a forum I regular on Nov 13th. Since NFL 2k5 is now backward compatible, you might want to hurry up and get a copy before they become truly scare and more expensive.

So today, I went into Gamestop to get another copy of NFL 2k5. I traded it in about a year ago since I figured, I would be playing NCAA and Madden for the 360. Surely they would be better…

Anyway, while some Gamestops/EB Games don’t have the game, most have it in their bargin bin. The girl working there said coporate have told them to destroy all the $1.99 games. Since NFL 2k5 fits into the category, I imagine NFL 2k5 will become more scarce since all the floating used copies out there will be thrown away.

So if you want a copy, know a friend that would enjoy it or need a backup, I would suggest you get one soon.

(Since the game was getting destroyed, I don’t know what that means, the girl gave me NFL 2k5 for free.) Can’t beat that!

Madden Patch, Quick Take

Finally received my 360 and just in time.

Here is my quick take on Madden post-patch.

• Interceptions are way down.
• Fumbles happen just a tad less.
• The super LBs are gone. There are times where they make no-look interceptions and swats but again it happens less.
• Passing game works now. Because DBs and LBs are toned down, the passing game is really opened up. Routes that were impossible to complete pre-patch now work.

Bottom Line, Madden after the patch is a good game. But it should have played like this from the release day!

March Madness Fatigue, not fixed in retail version?

When you see producers answer Q-and-A’s like politicians you know that something in the game will not be right come release day.

See what you make of this quote.

How does the fatigue system work? In the demo all of the players were nearly completely drained after only five minutes on the court.

Fatigue is defaulted to off for the final game. Our research indicates that the majority of our consumers play with it defaulted to off. If you play with fatigue on and auto substitutions set to on as well, players will fatigue during gameplay and will replenish if a time out is called, over half time or if the player is on the bench. Substitutions will occur if a player is tired or in foul trouble, frequency depending on the time/score of the game.

The reason why most gamers play with fatigue off is because basketball games tend to f%#! up that feature.

By intentionally hiding this feature, you can tell they aren’t all that confidant their model. Or they know it’s completely busted. Here’s another case where I hope I’m wrong.

Full Interview here.

Video Games Hurting Sports?

I want to spotlight a story making the rounds in England. Two stories appeared over the last few days at Computer and Video Games, on how games are to blame for kids being terrible at soccer.

It seems every 8 months, a similar debate starts up in this country. Instead of blaming video games for kids inactivity, we blame them for our murder rate. Here’s why I want to bring this story to the forefront. I think this is the next big video game story that will make its way into the mainstream media. This isn’t a trivial story but is one of so many factors contributing to our poor physical health as a country.

I’ll leave you with a quote that sums this debate quite well.

Hurst added: “There’s a balance between sitting down enjoying your leisure time playing games and running around playing sport. Thesedays a lot of the games are more sedentary – you hear the term couch potatoes – and I see this with my grandson.

CVG Article 1
CVG Article 2
CVG Article 3

PES 2008, A producer’s confession

It’s rare for criticism to force a producer to say a game is not what he wanted but that is what Shingo ‘Seabass’ Takatsuka, producer of PES 2008, has done. However I think you can glean a few key points out of this short interview at CVG.com.

PES 2009 is in development, but after hearing the criticism, we’ll be taking it back to the drawing board. It might not be next year, but it will be soon”, Seabass explained.

So 2009 might be that much of an improvement and Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer fans have to wait two years for the big upgrade. I think that’s borderline unacceptable.

The producer’s of PES have lost touch with the European and US market. Remember Konami already releases a Japanese League game. Seabass and Konami don’t really understand what is needed to retain the supremacy of the soccer market when the same complaints about the game are raised every year.

• The Master League has remained unchanged practically since the first North American Version, WE6. Seabass doesn’t realize that soccer isn’t having four or five leagues of 20 teams with a limited promotion system.
• While EA Sports has gobbled up licenses around the world, PES might not be able to offer real teams and kits. It could offer a series of generic leagues and let the community edit those teams and players.
• Graphically the game doesn’t look next-gen. Serious work needs to be done to make this game look good.

With Seabass looking toward the Summer 09 or PES 2010, it sounds like PES 2009 will see the same upgrade the 2008 version received, and that wasn’t much.

Madden Patch Out Now

Fire up your 360 and you should get an update with the patch. Let SC know if this fixes Madden and what you think of it.

State of Sports Games: The Football Wars, The Bad cont’d.

State of Sports Games is a multi-part series regarding the games of 2007. Each Wednesday I will take a look at a different genre or an aspect of sports game over the past year. Football Wars is the third in this serial.

Read Part 2: The Scores, What They Mean.
Read Part 1: The Scores

Football Wars is broken into readable parts. Today’s feature is continued from yesterday and is covering the worst about the 07 football releases. Later this week, Football Wars will continue with the good of the 07 releases and improvements I would like to see.

Read yesterday’s article

Football the same way since 1994
Believe it or not you have played videogame football the same way since the old PS1 days. Pick a team, pick a play, run the play do that for 17 weeks and playoffs.

The new catch-word for sports games these days is organic. Users are demanding more dynamic interaction with games and football games are not delivering.

The problem lies in two areas, ratings and playbooks. Let’s start with the positive. APF did something unique to football games this year — it had no ratings. It wasn’t perfect but you could see the differences between Elway’s arm and Montana’s precision. The position specific attributes helped to differentiate between key positional attributes and player styles. Football games need to move beyond the 100 point system and towards point systems with positional abilities. No one knows the difference between an 89 rated player and a 92 rated player. Madden’s weapons feature was little more than an icon showing Champ Bailey as a shutdown corner.

The playbooks designed for these games rely on you to beat a system instead of beating a team or a player. You beat the game by knowing that a certain route or play is more likely to succeed because of a game’s flaw not by exploiting your opponents weakness. An organic football game forces you to use Randy Moss, Adrian Petederson, Brian Urlacher to exploit mismatches, bowl over defense lines, or get in on every play. Madden and NCAA have not reached that level of football. In those games you win by knowing a sweep to a cleared out side results in 20 automatic yards. Beating a system is how we’ve played football since the PS1 days.

17 Weeks of Pre-Season
I can turn on ESPN or read Peter King’s column on monday to see the game between sundays. Much like the lack of organic football, the franchise modes in football games have been nothing more of 17 games with playoffs, some free agent period, lottery AI happy time…err a draft and pre-season before 17 weeks of exhibition games start anew. There is no world of football that surrounds your virtual NFL team. No mind games between coaches and players. Very little game-planning due to every team playing the same way. Injuries are all straightforward and teams never worry if their star player could hobble enough to make an impact. And the media is just a magazine of headlines, as in NCAA 08, with no interaction.

75,000 Seats, One Foam Finger
One of the biggest complaints of Madden was the lack of atmosphere. There was none aside from the 1970’s sitcom applause track that comes standard. I think NCAA is only saved because of the college band music and if you took that out of the game you would have Madden’s bleakness. Even John Madden isn’t in his own game.

APF also took a step back in this department. In NFL 2k5, the football game was sandwiched between a pre-game and post-game show with a slice of half-time highlights. The whole thing felt like an ESPN broadcast. APF had some of this but again it was limited to only a few highlights.

The Vision Cone In Your Head Is Off
Madden, NCAA and even APF show a lack of vision in the 07 releases. And I think that’s the state of football gaming. Madden is stuck between trying to please Madden-nation, football purists and casual gamers. NCAA is the schizophrenic little sibling that doesn’t know if it’s wants to have a good year or a bad year. And APF was a $60 demo of a really great game called APF 2k9.

Madden first. If there’s one thing you can take to the bank next year, it will be that the EA marketing department will take two features, one exciting and the other pure fluff, and make you think these two things are worth a $200 value for $59.99. Madden will promise you improved AI, fixes to last year’s problems, a franchise mode better than sex and 100,000 new animations. You know that the improved AI means they only fixed the problems from last year. Fixing last year’s problems mean they broke the responsiveness and AI that wasn’t broken before. The franchise mode will be better than sex because it include features from 3 Maddens ago. And 100,000 new animations mean 100,000 new animations but you only see 10.

I don’t know what Madden wants to be and I don’t think EA Sports knows aside they want everyone to buy it.

NCAA in recent years has always been better received than Madden. Strip away the turnover issues and I think you have the best all-around game. EA Sports has not had the drastic up and down years with NCAA next-gen as it did with the old-gen versions. The ride from 04 to 07 damn near killed college football fans. What saves NCAA isn’t the gameplay but the things the game cannot leave out; the polls and rankings, 100+ division one schools, the bowls and player recruitment.

All-Pro Football had the best on-field action of the big three but let’s face it its wasn’t really a football game. Including legends was one of only a handful of ideas that would tempt people to buy APF. Yet, the implementation was such that everyone questioned their purchase. The problem with APF wasn’t the lack of features its was the lack of a feature. The whole premise was to get a bunch of legends, design your own uniform and playbook and play against other legends on the same teams forever. Online you could play against any number of variations of legends but came with a side of cheese. Season mode was excruciating painful because legends were never utilized for that mode. Who wants to play against the same legend set-up when the whole game was about thousands of legends options?

What do games need to do to improve? Check back over the next few days to see.

State of Sports Games: The Football Wars, The bad

State of Sports Games is a multi-part series regarding the games of 2007. Each Wednesday, I will take a look at a different genre or an aspect of sports game over the past year. Football Wars is the third part in this series.

Read Part 2: The Scores, What They Mean.
Read Part 1: The Scores

Football Wars is broken into readable parts. Today’s feature (continued tomorrow) will cover the bad about the 07 releases. Later this week, Football Wars will continue with the good of the 07 releases and improvements I would like to see.

If there’s one genre still hurting from EA’s exclusive deal, its football. The death of NFL 2k5 created a void of two uninspired Madden versions for the next-gen consoles. NCAA Football, having zero competition, has done just enough to be fun and interesting but the 09 version needs some key improvements. And 2K football saw a revival in All-Pro Football 2k8, which did just well enough to see a 2k9 version.

This football war isn’t a battle of x’s and o’s — its a battle of real football. For as good as I think the All-Pro football engine is, there is nothing that can substitute playing as the real teams and players. EA knows this and 2K Sports knows this.

Ultimately the football war isn’t between EA Sports and 2k Sports. Competition breeds better products for you to buy and enjoy. This war is the lack of vision in the football market. As you’ll see throughout Part 1, we are playing football games with next-gen graphics, old-gen features and 8-bit ideas.

Gameplay: Why We Buy Electronics from China
Madden and NCAA were broken this year. Clear enough for everyone?

The turnover issues simply ruined both games. Neither game was horrible but one issue just killed off any sort of realism and fun that could have been had with both. It’s no fun when you are up 27-10 and with the AI forced to throw, you are gifted three INTs returned for a TDs. If this happened in one or two games a season then we all could live with it but this happened in almost every game played.

I’m going to nitpick this issue because I think its shows off everything that is wrong in Madden and NCAA.

The culprit for turnovers stem from the lack of true “fuzzy” AI, bizarro field/player proportions and lack of key animations. Fuzzy AI is a term used to describe how dumb, varying, or “human” AI can be. I’m sure there are varying degrees of awareness for AI players but you can hardly see it. Case-in-point, LBs with their back turned can jump up and intercept the ball, with your WR wide open 10 yards further upfield, is an example of AI knowing exactly what to do, without looking. DBs were programmed to jump routes before you passed is another example. Instead of strengthening defense by making players with varying abilities, they programmed the AI to cheat.

Couple this AI behavior to unrealistic field-to-player proportions and you have a game that is destined to have issues. The players can move 10 yards in 3 strides at times due to a cramped field. Watch any NFL game and there’s space all over the field, even inside the tackles. LBs abilities are exaggerated due to the cramped field and makes midfield play nonexistent.

Finally, I think Madden/NCAA need to go back to the drawing board for animations. Sticking to the defensive passing game, DBs need to stop going for INTs when reaching around a receiver is the correct play. Here again, is gameplay leftovers from the old-generations.

As for All-Pro Football, I think it had the best engine, one might say it was the most organic. But who cares? You can only play with the same and against the same teams for so long.

Franchise Mode: Why We Put Stuff Up on Ebay
Since there wasn’t one in APF, I’m going to just say, offering a game with a static season mode really was a slap in the face to people that supported 2k Sports over the years.

As reported earlier, Madden will see a patch to fix the bugs in the franchise mode. That gets us to a franchise mode that shouldn’t be broken in the first place. My complaint is that features offered in 08 are the same ones from the XB/PS2 versions. In fact, the old-gen version let you pick hot dog prices.

If you run the scorecard of franchise features this is what you get. Draft, the same as last year. Free Agency mostly the same. Pre-season, same-o. See the pattern.

The game that saw the biggest upgrade of the franchise mode (dynasty) was NCAA. They expanded their recruiting model so the user could get more feedback from players, make promises to recruits that included risk and offer a different method to communicate with recruits. While the changes weren’t drastic it was enough to stir up the off-season play.

Here’s where it went “wrong-ish”. The calling system was more monotonous than informative. Having to call the players every week did not enhance the new recruiting engine.

Back to the ‘features’
Looking back at the previews to get the complete picture pre- and post-release. There is no one better at pre-release hype than EA Sports. They sell their features that sell their game even if the features result in blowing up your 360.

The big hype centered we saw weapons and gang tackling in Madden; Campus Legend update and field leadership in NCAA; and “being back” in All-Pro Football.

Madden’s weapons were nothing more than pretty icons showing if you player could catch or truck over someone. Great hype but it didn’t change the dynamics of player interaction like APF’s trait system. The gang-tackling feature, something that really should have been in the old-gen version, finally made it’s appearance on the 360. EA sold us all a load of smelly brown gel on that one. The gang-tackling feature was two-man tackles where maybe a third player would fall and make it look like a third guy.

NCAA’s campus legend had another year to impress and I think it did. The absurdity of players starting in week 4 of their first year notwithstanding, campus legend provided gamers the best first-person experience for sports games. What other memorable feature is something you want to return next year? Leadership Control that give bonus points to players attributes that didn’t make sense. Or weather channel updates only available during exhibition games? No and No.

NCAA and Madden’s features feel more like tacked on bullet points in a press release than features added every year to enhance gameplay. When over-hyped features get the royal treatment in year one and by year two they are phased out, you know these are nothing more than gimmicks to sell NCAA and Madden.

All-Pro Football felt like a game that was just happy to be at the big table. While the gameplay was an improved version of NFL 2k5, the game was a budget title for $60. With no franchise or season mode, only six user created teams and limited user creation options, I don’t think a fully priced football game could come with any less features.

Check back tomorrow for the rest of this article.

NFL 2k5: Links you need to have

Now that NFL 2k5 is backward compatible, I want to point you to a few links you might need when you fire this puppy back up again.

Bill Harris Final NFL 2k5 Sliders

Bill Harris’ Franchise House Rules

Operation Sports NFL 2k5 Roster Editing Forum.

Flying Finn’s Editor
I’m not sure how this will work with the 360 saves but its still a must have program for XB saves.

Breaking News: NFL 2k5, Backwards Compatible for 360

A new backwards compatible list was released at Major Nelson’s blog. Most notable is the inclusion of ESPN NFL 2k5.

See the entire list.