I have never, never, ever game-blissed out with a sports game.
Yesterday? Oh, about 8 hours straight with MLB2K5 on the PS/2. Whew.
This game, in terms of realism, is pretty much out there. I was fanning guys left and right with Jamie Moyer’s junkballs (when he’s primarily a ground-out thrower) for example, but the tightness of the control and the action was just spot-on, baby. I’m thinking MLB2K5 is to real baseball as Jane’s Fighters Anthology is to real fighter combat…but you know, sometimes the real stuff just ain’t that much fun.
Yeah, but the Borg owns HH now. And is not currently doing sports franchises. And lets not get too carried away singing HH’s praises – the pitcher - batter interaction was outstanding (and yes, 50% of baseball is 90% pitching), but the rest of the game just kinda fades in my mind.
Haven’t I heard about some fairly significant bugs in this year’s game? I had high hopes for it, but if there are big problems (even for $20), then I’ll have to get my fix with MVP as much as I hate EA right now (and I don’t care if it comes with my own personal whore, I will NOT buy Madden until this exclusive deal is over!). :shock:
I dunno, the only bug I’ve seen so far (3 weeks into the season in Franchise mode) is when the commentators will refer to a player at the plate by the wrong name. This has happened twice to me in about 10 games I’ve actually played (the rest were simmed).
Commentators love to think the inning is over, and announce the other team’s lineups. They get their shit together though once your next batter is up. This happens quite a bit.
A.I. fielding that mysteriously doesn’t do ANYTHING or sends a completely inappropriate fielder to the ball when I hit the ball to a weird infield position. Usually means a free base hit for me. Has happened rarely, but does happen.
Wild pitches: depends on who the pitching/catching team is. I went for several games before I saw my first wild pitch, then about four came in that game for the A.I. Of course, it was Texas.
A couple of sound glitches that are quickly corrected.
That’s about it. There’s probably more, quibbles that the hardcore might pick out, but nothing else I’ve seen.
And by the way, dude, seriously: the world needs you focusing less on MLB2K5 and more on SS2K.
SS2K is going through another crisis. I’m dumping the hand-built method (which takes way to long to justify), and going the “let’s use the program’s data, dumbass, why reinvent the wheel” route. Especially since I’ve seen some yot crank out SS2K maps in Doom fucking 3 recently. All 9 levels (no cyberspace). Fuckin kids.
That pissed me off. Sure, he’s going to bomb out in the UI phase and stuff (or so I predict), but still.
So it’s time to program. WHOOPIE! It’ll eat into my baseball time. Spring training now, baby.
On the Xbox I saw eight in one game and it only happens when you have men on base. Some people are seeing this and I guess some aren’t. I know that I can’t play three games without one of those games being a passed ball/wild pitch fest. But that’s only scratching the surface of the weirdness of this game. There are franchise bugs, stat bugs, lineup bugs, vanishing player bugs, etc. I love how my AAA CF was credited for a win for the Reds and I have YET to see a Save recored correctly. Plus, I still can’t walk a CPU batter. That drives me nuts when I have to deliberately walk someone. To me, that’s just not baseball if I’m using a pitcher with no control and yet I can’t notice that when playing. When I can take Aaron Harang and go 7 strong innings and never walk a batter, that’s a problem.
Anyway, I loved last year’s game and that makes the bugs in this one all the more upsetting. There’s a great game underneath all the muck. As much as I have disliked EA’s baseball games, I think MVP is a vastly superior game this year.
ESPN and Sega are one in the same, I’m guessing for the last year now.
My brother rented MLB Slugfest 05 I guess it is (the newest one) for the Xbox and we played it last weekend. I kicked his ass in slugfest mode (the arcadey, silly mode) but it was fun. The commentary is truly funny - even when the stadium/engine is loading, they’ll play the pre-game commentary (kind of like if they had an open mike before the game and didn’t know it) during and some of the stuff is just hilarious. One is kind of like a drunken Harry Carry (almost as bad as the Bob & Tom one). Only played a few times but they haven’t repeated them yet.
Of course the slugfest mode has a lot of silliness, but you need that every once in awhile. Punching someone offbase or knocking them on their ass in a rundown is very satisfying.
