Saturday, April 21st, 2007...3:53 pm...by JRod
Born on Dates
Sudz posted a few days back on the death a MLB 2k7 and how the hype of a game often last longer than actually playing the game. He brings up a good point but I think there’s a reason for the death of games…
Poor quality!
Right now, I popped in NHL 2007 to get some hockey action. As I watch the end of the Calgary/Detroit game and I play my virtual game, I realize just how lacking NHL 2007. Now NHL 2007 gets the essence of hockey right but it misses the nuts and bolts. NHL 2007 isn’t the only one. Look at the so-called next game games and how they fared.
- Winning Eleven 2007 - What happened? Before the game was released we all knew features would be stripped but thought the gameplay would evolve. Instead the gameplay went backwards AND the features were stripped.
- Madden - How much better is this game to its “old-gen” counterpart?
- MLB 2k7 - A very solid title with great graphics, good gameplay but a few bugs. So what went wrong with this…2k Sports left the fun out of the game. And how much better is it to a little PS2 game called “The Show”?
We’ve had over a year to see how sports games would make the leap to the next-gen. And overall it’s been disappointing. Not even the graphics have truly been mind-blowing.
It’s not that the DSP board is losing interest faster; the games can’t hold the board’s attention longer.
1 Comment
May 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
I think the primary culprit for the uneven next-gen showings has been EA, and I say that as someone who generally enjoys their games. EA really seemed to focus too heavily on the quality of their player models and arenas without worrying about how the transitional animations would look or how the framerate would hold up. Their games invariably look amazing in stillshots (witness the popularity of the NCAA snapshot) but they just don’t move well. At the end of the day, what made Madden and NCAA fun on the current gen was the fluidity of play, and that’s something that is completely lacking on the 360. Even a promising title like NHL 07 is marred by a stuttering frame rate. When EA is unable to put out a single AAA title, it can’t help but damage the sports genre as a whole.
That said, I’ll take issue with the notion that the next gen sports titles are of generally poor quality. I play WE, NBA 2K7 and MLB 2K7 just about every day. WE obviously isn’t what we hoped it could be, but it is a terrific game nonetheless. NBA2K7 is the best basketball game ever made, it looks fantastic and it plays smoothly online and off. And while I know others have differing opinions on MLB 2K7, it’s by far the most fun I’ve had with a baseball game.
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