Thing is, the impressions thread is already 80 pages strong and since I posted this there there have only been 2 other posts, one of them telling me he enjoyed it so I'm posting it here again. If you must, feel free to delete it from here: I wanna share my views but I don't wanna anger anyone while doing it.
There is no question that the GPU in the 360 is doing more than in XBOX1. There is no question that more effort is being made in game production by the designers. But I do unfortunately have to question, what exactly they are spending their time and effort on.
First off, I should preface everything I say with a bit of a disclaimer so that it's clear that I am a veteran sports gamer like many of you who has been seeking realism in sports games since the Hardball series on the PC. I am not won over by visual perfection in graphics, by how cool it is that there's a guy selling beers in the stands in the background, or by how much Barry Bonds (Reggie Stocker, Joe Young, or whatever you wanna call him) looks like himself in the game. I have only one concern when I decide to invest months of my time on a sports video game and that is how faithfully it represents its real-life counterpart. It is for this reason that, in my humble opinion, The Show is still the only product that offers that ability.
All in all, but for a few glimmers of hope here and there, I find 2K7 to be a disappointment from the perspective of someone who seeks the closest thing to simulation as possible from a sports game. Some will argue that true simulation is "Out Of The Park" and that none of these other baseball games are truly simulation because they involve you controlling the players. I agree and OOTP is a magnificent piece of software; always has been. However, I'll sacrifice pure simulation for a little fun if it stays within the realm of believability. Some sports games have achieved this really well, but most fail because it's a tough thing to do. Especially when the majority of people playing sports games play for a more "fantasy" type feel where "what if" situations are more the norm. E.g. "What if Bonds was on the yankees? What if the CPU was allowed to trade freely?"
The exclusion of being able to handle all transactions for all teams in a season is, in my opinion, careless. Having the option wouldn't be difficult as many games before have done so. What it means is that I either allow my season to be completely destroyed by imaginary trades and signings happening or that I turn off all transactions, start with opening day rosters and dismiss big trades when they happen throughout the year. Neither solution, to me, is acceptable. And if I can't play a season, I can't be bothered to play the game.
Besides, what am I really missing? Even if I cared about the graphics, which I dont very much, most of the faces on these players are in their own way worse than they were on XBOX. What difference does it make how much richer the detail is if the whole face as an animation and 3d model doesn't work? I shouldn't see the maps that make up players' faces splitting at the seams around the neckline. There are severe, not trivial, but absolutely sever lighting issues in this game. 'Overcast' creates a stadium that looks like someone forgot to turn the stadium lights on. 'Night' games in certain stadiums choose to keep things dark with bright hilights which is not the way things look at night when theyre lit by huge HMI lights in a stadium. The lighting is supposed to look more flat and multidirectional, hence the infamous four-shadows 'X' we see around players in stadiums at night. They're being lit by all sides so we see roughly four shadows. The faces and bodies look... unfinished, for lack of a better word and faces look like those of people who have been tragically burned in a fire. And while some may salivate at the sight of cloth flapping in the wind, you'd really have to be in almost gale force winds to see clothes moving that much. The jerseys look like plastic bags, not like the thick, rich fabric that they are. And if there WAS that much wind in the ballpark, the ball would never get to the plate from the pitcher's mound. Bottom line here is that while you may be completely disagreeing with me and thinking that all these things are remarkable visual achievements; I'll agree with you, they are. They just don't make any sense in THIS game or with each other. There is no sense of unity that keeps the game visually tight. It's as though 5 different graphics teams worked on the visuals separately and they threw it all together at the end without comparing what they had all done. Again, I don't care about graphics, but don't tell me how hard you worked on the graphics when it's clear that there are gaping holes in your execution. Perhaps my perception is somewhat biased having a bit of a background in this field, but I don't think it makes my opinions or observations any less valid. I'm sure there are others out there who feel the same way and see the same things. Some of us just aren't as easily fooled by things that we won't even be noticing 3 months from now anyway.
In conclusion, I'm sure that with some slider tweaks, this game could play a decent game of baseball. It just can't offer much more than 9 innings at a time and it's clear that those 9 innings were meant to be as "action-y" and "arcade-y" as possible. The game was built around the principle motivation of showing off the graphics as often as possible and it's much easier to accomplish that if there's lots of fly balls and homeruns. Tweak all the settings and I don't know that you'd necessarily get a better game. Maybe just a toned down version of the hyper-realistic baseball that already exists out of the box.
If you're having fun with it, then that's all that matters. My views are completely irrelevant to you and you probably think I'm dead wrong. But if you agree, feel free to share some of YOUR thoughts with me on these topics.
PLAY BALL!, guys... regardless of what game you're using to do so.
There is no question that the GPU in the 360 is doing more than in XBOX1. There is no question that more effort is being made in game production by the designers. But I do unfortunately have to question, what exactly they are spending their time and effort on.
First off, I should preface everything I say with a bit of a disclaimer so that it's clear that I am a veteran sports gamer like many of you who has been seeking realism in sports games since the Hardball series on the PC. I am not won over by visual perfection in graphics, by how cool it is that there's a guy selling beers in the stands in the background, or by how much Barry Bonds (Reggie Stocker, Joe Young, or whatever you wanna call him) looks like himself in the game. I have only one concern when I decide to invest months of my time on a sports video game and that is how faithfully it represents its real-life counterpart. It is for this reason that, in my humble opinion, The Show is still the only product that offers that ability.
All in all, but for a few glimmers of hope here and there, I find 2K7 to be a disappointment from the perspective of someone who seeks the closest thing to simulation as possible from a sports game. Some will argue that true simulation is "Out Of The Park" and that none of these other baseball games are truly simulation because they involve you controlling the players. I agree and OOTP is a magnificent piece of software; always has been. However, I'll sacrifice pure simulation for a little fun if it stays within the realm of believability. Some sports games have achieved this really well, but most fail because it's a tough thing to do. Especially when the majority of people playing sports games play for a more "fantasy" type feel where "what if" situations are more the norm. E.g. "What if Bonds was on the yankees? What if the CPU was allowed to trade freely?"
The exclusion of being able to handle all transactions for all teams in a season is, in my opinion, careless. Having the option wouldn't be difficult as many games before have done so. What it means is that I either allow my season to be completely destroyed by imaginary trades and signings happening or that I turn off all transactions, start with opening day rosters and dismiss big trades when they happen throughout the year. Neither solution, to me, is acceptable. And if I can't play a season, I can't be bothered to play the game.
Besides, what am I really missing? Even if I cared about the graphics, which I dont very much, most of the faces on these players are in their own way worse than they were on XBOX. What difference does it make how much richer the detail is if the whole face as an animation and 3d model doesn't work? I shouldn't see the maps that make up players' faces splitting at the seams around the neckline. There are severe, not trivial, but absolutely sever lighting issues in this game. 'Overcast' creates a stadium that looks like someone forgot to turn the stadium lights on. 'Night' games in certain stadiums choose to keep things dark with bright hilights which is not the way things look at night when theyre lit by huge HMI lights in a stadium. The lighting is supposed to look more flat and multidirectional, hence the infamous four-shadows 'X' we see around players in stadiums at night. They're being lit by all sides so we see roughly four shadows. The faces and bodies look... unfinished, for lack of a better word and faces look like those of people who have been tragically burned in a fire. And while some may salivate at the sight of cloth flapping in the wind, you'd really have to be in almost gale force winds to see clothes moving that much. The jerseys look like plastic bags, not like the thick, rich fabric that they are. And if there WAS that much wind in the ballpark, the ball would never get to the plate from the pitcher's mound. Bottom line here is that while you may be completely disagreeing with me and thinking that all these things are remarkable visual achievements; I'll agree with you, they are. They just don't make any sense in THIS game or with each other. There is no sense of unity that keeps the game visually tight. It's as though 5 different graphics teams worked on the visuals separately and they threw it all together at the end without comparing what they had all done. Again, I don't care about graphics, but don't tell me how hard you worked on the graphics when it's clear that there are gaping holes in your execution. Perhaps my perception is somewhat biased having a bit of a background in this field, but I don't think it makes my opinions or observations any less valid. I'm sure there are others out there who feel the same way and see the same things. Some of us just aren't as easily fooled by things that we won't even be noticing 3 months from now anyway.
In conclusion, I'm sure that with some slider tweaks, this game could play a decent game of baseball. It just can't offer much more than 9 innings at a time and it's clear that those 9 innings were meant to be as "action-y" and "arcade-y" as possible. The game was built around the principle motivation of showing off the graphics as often as possible and it's much easier to accomplish that if there's lots of fly balls and homeruns. Tweak all the settings and I don't know that you'd necessarily get a better game. Maybe just a toned down version of the hyper-realistic baseball that already exists out of the box.
If you're having fun with it, then that's all that matters. My views are completely irrelevant to you and you probably think I'm dead wrong. But if you agree, feel free to share some of YOUR thoughts with me on these topics.
PLAY BALL!, guys... regardless of what game you're using to do so.
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