Category: Archive

I went to check the thread I linked in the post below and it seems that things continue to heat up as Markus “Raging Bull” Heinsohn expresses his displeasure with the (I am assuming) rhetorical question:

“So if I code tic-tac-toe I get a score of 100%? Nice”

No you don’t. But if you code tic-tac-toe, add a bunch of features that don’t work very well or have awkward interfaces, you get a 47%. And people will be asking why the hell Heinsohn messed up the perfectly nice game of tic-tac-toe.

This is what I like to call the .400 Software Studios effect. When they were around, they made some very, very nice games…eventually. The release code was horrendous (possible exception being their pro basketball titles), but they were patched up over weeks and months.

Should reviewers give these types of games high scores based on what they could become, or on what they currently are? I am probably in the camp that wants to hold publishers’ feet to the fire and hold them accountable for what they release to the public. There’s too much of this paying beta testing going on and I’m a bit tired of it.

On the other hand, you don’t want to kill a game if there’s hope that the developer will fix it.

Of all the reviewers on the planet, Brett Todd’s opinions probably most closely match my views on most text games. He has a long resume in this genre. He was my sports editor at Games Domain Review (originally a UK site by the way) many years ago and knows Championship Manager, Diamond Mind, and all that good old text gaming stuff. He knows what he is talking about, more than any text-gaming reviewer out there as far as I am concerned.

I am not sure if he actually came up with the 47% score himself, but I certainly understand why it got that score. Maybe he and many others are getting tired of the .400 Software Studios effect.

The good news? Fix the game and OOTPB 2007 will get great scores next year!

For those that missed all of the whoopla, PC Gamer slammed OOTPB 2006 with a 47% score, while scoring Baseball Mogul and Puresim higher. Brett Todd wrote the review comparison and I have to regretfully agree with the score. Let me explain. Many review sites/magazines only take a look at the released product. As is. OOTPB 2006 was not a playable game on many different levels – online play was confusing (broken for some), solo play had very bad AI, and many things simply didn’t work or were coded badly. These are all things that a reviewer like Mr. Todd will jump on and he has consistently over the years been highly critical of games for exactly these same reasons. I actually applaud his objectivity since I know he is a big fan of the series.

Baseball Mogul seems to work and PureSim is more refined, so yes, they deserved higher scores. Heck, even OOTP 6.5 deserved a higher score than OOTPB 2006 based on release code.

On the other hand, reviews like the 9 out of 10 at Operation Sports are nonsense. I don’t think reviews should be based on game potential, but I am not sure if the OS reviewer actually played the game enough to judge that potential anyhow.

So don’t shoot the messenger. If you release a game with the long list of problems that OOTPB 2006 had, this is what you reap from objective reviewers. They will always score bug ridden games low.

Just be happy I don’t review anymore!

I just read Bill Harris’ lengthy discussion about OOTPB 2006. He makes some good points, but comparing OOTPB 2006 in its first (well, not even first yet since it doesn’t quite work) iteration to Football Manager really isn’t a fair comparison. FM has been around a long, long time. It is one of the longest developed text sims in the history of text sims. Heck Eastside Hockey Manager isn’t nearly as good as Football Manager for the same reasons, if we’re keeping score.

Even with that longevity, Football Manager only recently added its 2D match engine. Eastside Hockey Manager doesn’t have this fully functional yet.

Look, there are plenty of people out there like my brother who like Budweiser and Coors Light. It’s their beer, they swear by it, and don’t want to taste anything else. In fact, anything else actually tastes bad or “bitter” to them. Others, like myself, would rather drink water than ever again be forced to drink a Budweiser or Coors Light. The beer we drink is an acquired taste. There will always be folks like me that prefer a nice porter in a tulip glass and there will be people perfectly happy drinking Coors from a “cold sealed” can.

Out of the Park Baseball 2006 is the first badly tasting batch of what could be a fine porter. It doesn’t aspire to be an easy drinking Budweiser. Lots of people out there want it watered down or brewed as something else, but that’s not happening. It is what it is.

But yea, a walkthrough would be nice for the game…

Crap. Out of the Park Baseball 2006 does not work with online leagues after patch #2. The import/export process simply doesn’t work. I continue to marvel at the apparent lack of a beta testing online league somewhere (anywhere) that SI can test these things with. I want to thank part of the online community that is taking it upon itself to test the game before commissioners waste any time trying to get this thing up and running.

It doesn’t help the situation, but you could see this coming a mile away. Sports Interactive knew zero about online leagues before Markus came aboard and does not know how to test their games’ online league functions. That’s a harsh statement, but nothing they’ve done these past weeks leads me to believe otherwise. Yes, the whole zipped league file FTP function is nice, but if you can’t run a league because basic things are broken with the import/export process, who cares?

So when the game finally works, I’ll return to it. I’m not wasting hours of my life setting up leagues only to be frustrated that they can’t work online. My suggestion for people sitting on the fence is that they NOT buy OOTPB 2006 at this point. There are already enough paying beta testers out there, so no sense in adding yourself to the process until a functional product is released.

The good folks at Sports Interactive released the new OOTPB 2006 patch as promised. The patch list of fixes/additions is quite impressive. I was going to ask if all of the naysayers and general loud mouthed forum idiots would start posting apologies after applying the patch. But even if the patch works as advertised, I imagine that group will complain that the game shouldn’t have been released with all of those problems.

I’ll do a re-import and some more analyses this weekend.

For the first time in a long time, I have not preordered the latest, greatest, incarnation of NCAA or Madden football. I just do not see a compelling reason why I should upgrade over NCAA 06 and Madden 05. I have not touched NCAA 06 in months; I sold Madden 06 after I realized that it was just not going to get much play; have not touched Madden 05 since I sold Madden 06.

EA should consider the above a real “ouch,” or at the very least, an “oops.” What happens when those of us with disposable income are no longer enchanted with the latest yearly upgrades? How does EA (and other publishers) make money when those of us that like spending money on videgames become complacent, dare I say indifferent to the traditional bounty of coffin filling football releases? What if I am not alone? I digress.

With all that said, I am considering getting a PSP football game (I sold my PSP version of Madden several month ago), but I am still not convinced that EA is going to improve Madden. My hopes were not encouraged after seeing the following on GameStop’s site (in reference to PSP Madden):

* PSP Exclusives�Return kicks, avoid tackles, and aim for the High Score in a PSP-exclusive mini-game, or transfer an entire season in Franchise mode back and forth between your PSP and your PlayStation�2.

Wow! We get to actually return kicks in a football game. What a crock of crap. Actually, it should say something along the lines of realistic punt returns; I suppose that would be worth something.

If tradition holds true, NCAA will be based on last year’s PSP Madden, which was a so-so game, that I only enjoyed for a short while before moving on to something else. A proper portable NCAA title would be money well spent, but will EA do the game justice?

If it is not obvious by my lack of videogame posts, right now I am finding console gaming a rather blah experience, which may explain my lack of enthusiasm for this year’s crop of football games.

It is always nice to return home, especially after a long business trip. I will not go into the details of work (since some folks from the office actually read my crap), but the trip was very draining. I did get to see some football in an English pub, and I got to try all sorts of beer (that is always the fun part). In Chester I got to run around the old Roman wall, which was great exercise, and extremely entertaining. It is hard to believe that this wall was built 1000+ years ago; nothing like that in Georgia. I also had beer in some extremely old pubs, including a couple that were underground, and once used as Roman barracks.

The not so fun part of the trip was getting sick; very, very sick. I cannot recall ever feel as bad as I did Monday morning at the train station. Not sure if it was a virus or some bad clams from the night before, but the train ride from London to Chester was the trip form hell. I never thought I would make it without hurling all over the place, but thank the good Lord that I did make it in one piece.

I did not get in much gaming, except for a couple of hours on the plane with the PSP. Lumines, Pinball Hall of Fame, and Winning Eleven receive all the action, so noting really new to report.

At any rate, I am glad to be back on US soil!

Wrestling Spirit Two was released by the good folks at Grey Dog Software.

Sorry for the slow posts this past week. With Jonathan in the UK and my recent return from lovely Seattle, Washington, I think we’ve both sampled quite a lot of beer. And completely forgotten about computer gaming. Greetings to any readers who frequent the Collins Street Pub in Seattle. A fine beer pub indeed!

In the news – EA Sports makes an unrealistic management sports game. This is second-hand information from the good folks at The Blog for the Sports Gamer. Is anyone really surprised by this? The good news is that the mod community is hard at work fixing the game.

We still wait with great anticipation for the Out of the Park Baseball 2006 patch. I think the length of time we wait for the patch may be strangely related to how far England and Germany go in the World Cup, but this is pure speculation on my part.

I am taking off to the UK on business this Friday; will be back on July 1. I am sure I will post here and there, when the opportunity presents itself, but if I am not around, know that I am having a delicious cold one (or three). I am actually looking forward to watching some proper football (World Cup style) in an English pub. Should be for good time. Cheers!

So I was wrong about Georgia; I thought they would have a better showing in the CWS.

So what of Team USA’s chances over Ghana tomorrow morning? You have to score to win, so for starters the US is going to have to figure out how to get the ball in the net. No advice here other than we have had next to no quality shots on goal, and technically we have yet to score (an own goal vs. Italy does not really cut it when it). No idea what Arena is going to do to improve the offense, but something has to change or we will be going home.

I think Italy will beat the Czechs, so it is up to the US to do their part. I am going to go on a limb and predict a 2-0 victory for the Red, White, and Blue.

Oh yeah. The Braves are still sucking wind.

In the World Cup spirit, I finally seriously loaded and updated Football Manage 2006 while I wait for Out of the Park Baseball 2006�s next patch. I forgot how much a pain it is to keep a game�s CD-ROM in the disk drive in order to play it. Since most of my gaming time is split between World of Warcraft and OOTP 6.5, FM 2006 is the only one bugging me to insert the CD every time I open the game.

I�m a converted MLS fan now that Houston has a team. Growing up a New York Giants fan means you can never cheer for anything from Dallas, so an even passing interest in FC Dallas was out of the question. The Dynamo solved my problem and the World Cup made me finally get serious about it.

Finding updated MLS rosters is a Google nightmare. I could find only two that included the new teams (Houston and the renamed New York). One had some weird lower division system that the creator decided to include in the database. The other I found at Sport Sims Heaven and I used it, even though it didn�t include the team logos and kits.

Luckily, my search uncovered a nifty site called sourtitoutsi and it should be in every text gamer’s bookmark section. It not only has all sorts of great stuff to download, but it contains strategy guides and tutorials for most of Sports Interactive�s games. There�s even an OOTPB 2006 newbie guide posted.

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I downloaded the complete logo set and new MLS kits from sourtitoutsi. Updating the database was pretty easy. Not so with the logos. Eventually I just deleted the installed files and extracted the new pictures to get the team pictures to appear. But it sure makes the game seem more alive with the new logos and uniforms.

I�ll continue to update my progress as things get going�

William Abner is taking a close look at PureSim 2007 over at the Blog for the Sports Gamer. He’s making some good observations about the game’s mechanics, but the most interesting thing he writes is:

“Now, if this were OOTP people would be screaming from the rafters. To me, this is equally as messed up as what OOTP does. To outright cut this guy is completely bonkers.”

I’m glad I am not the only person that notices a double standard that seems to be applied to everything called Out of the Park Baseball within the text gaming community. If something is broken in OOTPB, people are outraged, hair is pulled out of scalps, teeth are gnashed, and the world seems to be coming to an end. Similar problems crop up in other text baseball games, and good old [insert Shaun, Clay, Tom, etc.] will fix it.

There just isn’t the same level of stupidity associated with the reactions to other text baseball games.

My favorite idiot is the one who feels that he would have made the difference over the incompetent OOTP beta testing group. This special idiot is the one with magical powers. His list of problems would force Markus and Sports Interactive to bend to his will, for his problems would NEVER be ignored when a gaming company was choosing between releasing a game and fixing all of the bugs.

Where were these idiots when PureSim was in earlier incarnations with all of its fun AI issues? Where are they in the Baseball Mogul forums?

The lunacy and volume of OOTPB complaints is just something I cannot understand, given the state of other less complained about products. I’m happy that I am not alone in this confusion.

People at work get tired of me fussing, cussing, and complaining about the lack of passion for soccer (yes I know it is football everywhere else) in the US. I long for the day when there is some pride in what the National team does on the international stage. I want people to be hacked off about the officiating in today’s game. The stuff of water coolers.

Maybe we took some small step today. When I was in the check out line at the local adult beverage store, a couple of buddies in the other checkout line waved over another buddy entering the store. After some brief chitchat, they started talking about the US/Italy game. It was obvious that they were not soccer fans or even that knowledgeable, but wonders of wonders, they were talking about the game.

I could go on with this story. Tasty, cold, adult liquids. Explanations of the US not being out of the WC. But the day has been long, and I have posted enough for one heck of a sports day (LeMans, WC action, CWS).

GA had a chance (so says the announcers – I was watching the World Cup), but in the end they could not hold on against Rice. I guess I should not feel too bad because I had Rice beating UGA in my office pool. I actually picked several of the CSW teams correctly: Clemson, Rice, GA, GA Tech, Cal St Fullerton, and Miami. I picked Clemson to down Texas (oops) in the finals.

Unless Oregon State mounts a major comeback against Miami, it looks like the Dawgs will go in the losers’ bracket against the Beavers. Of course that is right were we want them. Seriously, GA has played awesome of late when in elimination games. Still not a great way to start, but I like our chances on Monday.