None of the 2k games ever work properly online, so the PC version isn’t alone there.
Some of the face/uniform/texture mods for the PC community are amazing though.
Well at the risk of a further derail I can pose the same question when it comes to racing games. Why does developing Gran Turismo etc. take so damn long? Are they reinventing the wheel (pun intended) with every game, or does it really just take THAT long to make 3d models of cars and design a bunch of tracks? Shouldn’t driving game AI be a solved problem as well (not counting kart racers or other gimmick racing games)?
If you are not defining sports to be only stick&ball, then sim racing is stronger IMO on the PC than anywhere else. Today you’ve got rfactor, iracing, netkar, Live for Speed, and more, and rfactor 2 and GTR3 are releasing in 2012. With mods on rfactor, you can do F1, Nascar, sports cars, historic cars, whatever…the only thing we are really missing is a good rally game.
As a former FPS Football fanantic, I really miss the days when the best football was on the PC.
Speaking as someone who has worked with mod and track developers for rfactor and GTR2, the problem is getting the AI to handle many different track and car types. For example if you have an AI driver who is good at modern F1 cars on a modern F1 track and use the same code for the AI to drive a 60s muscle car on a twisting river of a track like Mosport, it just doesn’t work. So the AI has to be tweeked because unlike a human, it has trouble adapting to the 10fold differences in grip, braking power, optimum yaw, etc. Gran Turismo has that breadth of cars.
Even then, getting the AI to race you like a human is a problem I’ve not seen anyone perfectly resolve. They seem to be too passive and never put a nose in, or too aggressive and punt you.
Another area many sim desgners are working on is higher level sim of the tires and track. Right now they do heat and grip pretty well, but except for Netcar you cant flatspot tires and in no game do you get things like graining or blistering on the tire. iRacing laserscans its tracks, and that is a big leap, but fr the next leap you need the sim to portray changing track conditions like dirt on track from someone going off, or rubber buildup, or really good wet to dry ad dry to wet transitions.
Regardless of your system it would downgrade the textures to medium and look like ass online. That all being said nobody plays realisitic online, and offline the game BY FAR is better on PC.
But the money spent is in the modding community.
The mods the last 2 years have been amazing. They remake players if needed (for instance Kobe looked like an Alien last year, they redid him and he looked like Kobe). Not only that they were total conversions last year that changed the entire NBA to 1992 and you could play the entire season along with the teams and stadiums from back then. I was playing as Jordan in NBA 2k10, the year before 2k stole that idea from the modders.
I think 2k’s NBA games have the best “Be A Leg End” mode out of the various FIFA, PES, Madden efforts. Basketball is one of my least favourite sports, but Sports Game + RPG element is apparently like Catnip to me.
Meanwhile, here’s some rugby challenge gameplay from a first round world cup game, featuring rucks, scrums, a kick for position, a “Box” or “up and under” kick, a high tackle and entirely too many sentences that start with “Well.”
I strolled through a group featuring Spain, Georgia, (the country, not the state), Fiji, Tonga and Italy and then drew Wales in the first knockout round. After two early tries the score was 7-7, but the Welsh then added a try without conversion to lead 12-7 at the break. Then they burst out of the gates in the second half with another try to lead 19-7. We hit a long drop kick that bounced in off the post for 10-19 and then added a try, that the Welsh answered with a penalty leaving the score 17-22 in Wales’ favour with about two minutes left and France under the shadows of her own posts.
I then put together comfortably my best sustained possession so far in this game, that went through about 12 phases. When the clock expires, (80:00), the game keeps going until either there’s an infraction of some kind or the ball is kicked into touch, so I knew I couldn’t kick for position, or try anything too risky either - so we ground down the field right with ruck after ruck until we were under the Welsh posts and after three attempts to crack the defence ended with French forwards stuffed on the goalline, I finally pushed over and hit the conversion to win 24-22 with the clock at about 83 minutes.
I get rewarded with Australia in the semi-final - the second best team in the game - after my last World Cup, as England, was ended in the semi-finals by New Zealand - the first best team in the game. I’ll get the Northern Hemisphere a World Cup win eventually though. Probably.
Fifa 12 is excellent and pretty much a direct port of teh 360 and ps3 versions. Just need a decent controller (360)
Man, FIFA 13 is pretty fun. I just have it on the default settings but it’s easy to goof around. Except for that fucking lob shot skills challenge.
I’ll have to try an NBA game next.
There’s only one NBA game for PC: NBA2K13. No competitor from EA in the form of NBA Live for a few years now.
Yeah that article was more in reference to when I might get around to it. 2014, 2015, etc.
I’m working on a first-person multiplayer hockey game called Hockey?, you can check it out at hockeyquestionmark.com
Here’s a video of some semi-pros playing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-t8LMUaJw
It definitely takes some practice to learn (there’s no shoot button, the stick is directly controlled with the mouse) but it’s pretty fun once you get the hang of it.