E3 2005 Day 2
After focusing most of my attention for day one on the 3 games I considered to be the most anticipated sports games open to the public at the show Madden ’06, NCAA ’06, and NBA 2k6 Day 2 was a lot more branching out to make sure the rest of the stuff got covered. There won’t be nearly as much detail as my thoughts on Madden and NCAA, but there was a lot of different games that I saw today.
NBA ’06
This game was pretty early in development but seemed to show good potential. The build was very rough, you could even go out of bounds without it ever being called. But it seemed like they were really taking their sports games seriously now. First they turned MLB around and now this game seems to be headed in the right direction. The graphics didn’t look as nice as NBA 2k6, but I’d expect them to pick it up greatly once they start developing for the powerful PS3.
The game has a story mode, where you create a player, choose what team he is drafted to, then complete a series of 60 or so tasks instead of playing normal games. Instead you are placed in situations such as being tied 5 minutes before the half and having to take your team into the half with a 10 point lead. The story mode is linear so if you don’t pass on your first attempt there is no negative affect to your player or his team, instead you just keep trying until you do succeed. Also in story mode your entire team will be fictional, you create one player and the rest of you team will be automatically created. While in story mode you’ll be able to be a team player or a flashy super star not caring about your team type player, each will affect your teammates ratings. If you pass to your teammates and involve them their ratings will likely go up, if you play like you only care about you, your teammates will likely care less and their rating will drop. While playing you’ll also be trying to get yourself marketed and make more money for yourself in order to help turn your player into a true Superstar.
NBA 06’s mini games were the most fun I’ve had at E3 with a controller so far. The one we saw had two players shooting, there were numbers all along the floor and when you made a shot from that number you got that many points as well as the circle around the number would turn your color (blue or green) you could steal the other players points by shooting from a circle of their color, and also you could take your opponents ball which added a bit of strategy to the game. For instance if your shot went way to the corner of the court it might be faster to wait for the rebound of your opponents shot, and grab his ball which would mean he’d have to go get the ball that was much farther away and give you a chance to pick up an extra shot or two while he was off grabbing the other ball. It was a pretty simple game, easy to pick up and play, but tons of fun, it was great to hear that the mini games will be playable online, since I know those will be a blast for getting a few quick minutes of gaming in when you don’t have time for a full game.
NBA 2k6:
I really feel like I should say something about the game, but really so far it doesn’t seem like there is much to say. At this point I’m disappointed with it, last year at E3 it looked much better than the previous years game, at this point 2k6 looks worse than 2k5. The graphics to me do not look as sharp as 2k5 and there seems to be a collision problem where you kinda get sucked into players and are unable to do anything at these times you just have to wait for the animation to end. All of these things I’m sure could be fixed by the release date, and I would expect them to be fixed, but from what I’ve seen so far the only things that I like about 2k6 more than I liked in 2k5 is the College Hoops style freethrow shooting, the fact that players catch the ball much better on the run, and it does seem like teams might play more like their actual NBA counterparts such as the Heat dumping the ball to Shaq and the Suns running more. At this point it’s hard to tell how much of a change has actually been made to the different teams playing styles though, hopefully I’ll look more into that on Day 3.
Also NBA 2k6 now has the VIP mode that NFL 2k5 had, there is no word yet on what celebrities if any will be in this years game, and just how well this system will translate from the NFL game to the NBA game, but we’ll be meeting with VC tomorrow about it, so hopefully they’ll explain more.
College Hoops 2k6
To be honest I haven’t spent more than 5 minutes with this game yet. Mostly because at this point it is the farthest away from release, and I think because of that it feels very much like College Hoops 2k5 at this point. So far I didn’t really notice any significant changes to the game, which could very well be considered a good thing because of how great last years title was. I should learn more about this title on Friday when we talk to VC.
Xbox 360
Yes the graphics look very nice but really the graphics aren’t what has impressed me so far about the console. I mean any of the new consoles are gonna look amazing, it’s all the other cool stuff that this machine can do that really make it something you feel like you need it. They have really taken the community stuff to a whole new level, as well as the personalization, that has obviously been one of their main priorities with this console and look like they’ve had no problems pulling that off. You’ll be able to access your friends list and their profiles while playing any game, the game you’re playing can even continue to run while you are checking on this. ALL GAMES now will have custom soundtrack, that’s pretty damn nice, plus your custom sound tracks don’t even need to be on your Xbox, apparently if you have your PC networked you can just play your files right off your PC, or even plug in an IPod or another music playing devise straight into the USB slot of the Xbox 360 in order to play your music off of there.
The hard drive is now detachable, so you can take it over to your friends house if you want him to see some of your files, although the only way to transfer stuff from your hard drive to his will still be through memory cards.
You’re always on live, if you want you can make yourself appear offline if you don’t want to be hassled, but while playing a game or watching a movie on your 360 you can now talk to people on your friends list in a voice chat. So you can be working on your Madden Franchise and they can be playing Perfect Dark and you’ll be able to talk to one another while you’re doing your own thing. With the camera you’ll also be able to have a video chat.
The 360 controller is quite comfortable. Moving the black and white buttons to the front of the controller above the triggers was a great move. I was pretty skeptical about the controller from the pictures on the net, but now after getting a chance to play with it I was instantly in love with it. Plus the wireless capability is quite nice, no more rolling up your controller when you’re done with it, now you can just toss it wherever and hope to be able to find it later. Also the controller will apparently be rechargeable.
Blitz The League:
If the cover reminds you of playmakers that’s probably because that’s what this game is going reaching for. This is a game that would have made Vince McMahon quite proud, and seems to be a mix of NFL, XFL, Playmakers, and the prison system mixed together. Within the first minute of viewing it there was a shot up the skirt of cheerleaders, then some illegal hits, followed later by actually watching your players leg break and a dirty trainer coming out onto the field to inject you with painkillers so that you could play hurt. Luckily for those of you that wish to go the high road with this game (can’t be too many of you, since there must be some reason why you are playing it) you can choose to instead of shooting up your player allow them to be carted off and rest up to let their injury heal properly.
The game itself seemed to play like past blitz games, of course they did spice it up a little to add extra violence and some nice lovely TD celebrations such as acting like you’re taking a leak on your goal posts, truly a classy game. I gotta say I think Midway had a great idea with this one. The league is made up of 18 teams, each one has a star player and each of these stars have their own story. In fact Midway has made up about 100 years of the leagues past in order to help give the player a sense of the leagues history and apparently how this rough style of play came to be, part of this history is that now the referees are now all on strike.
Unfortunately the story mode in this is linear, I was hoping for a different story for each team and more of a sense that depending on how you played or what you did you could possibly get a significantly different story each time you go through your career. But that doesn’t sound as if it’s the case. At the heart of it, “Blitz The League” seems to be a supped up copy of previous blitz titles, however I do think that the new direction they are heading in is actually positive since as they said, they kinda went as far as they could go with their NFL style game.
This game will also feature online play for both PS2 and Xbox, as well as a rating of Mature.
Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball:
From what I saw of it, it was pretty disappointing. Although more games are always good since that means more competition and more choices for the consumer, this years baseball market would be a tough one to crack into with MVP, MLB 2k5, and MLB 2006 all being very high quality games. Pennant Chase Baseball didn’t seem to have any aspect to it, that they did better than any of the other games and most all of the game at this point seemed to be below the level of all 3 of it’s competitors which are already released into this years market. I think it is good that Nintendo made a baseball game since this year should give them something to build on for next year, instead of starting from scratch, and with no MVP in 2006 and no likelihood of MLB 2k6 heading to GameCube at least there is hope that gamecube owners will have some option for a new baseball game next year. As for what I saw at E3 it was pretty underwhelming.
Mario Baseball
If I had to choose between this and Nintendo Pennant Chase, I’d actually go with Mario baseball at this point, just based off the fact that at least it is trying to go for something different. It’s not like Mario baseball is trying to directly compete with anything else on the market. It is what it is, if you like Mario Gold and Mario Tennis, and you like baseball, I can’t see why you wouldn’t like this title. It was relatively easy to pick up and play, not a lot of depth to it, I imagine there will be a great deal of unlockables, the graphics were kinda cute, all and all I think it’s exactly what people would expect from a game called Mario Baseball. The fields were also quite unique, there would be fountains or rivers in the way, as well as a normal looking baseball stadium, again this is likely no shock to anyone that has played any of the other Mario “sports” games.
Super Mario Striker
I didn’t even know that Mario was branching out into soccer, so this was a complete surprise for me when I saw it at the show. This might be a lot of fun with 2 or 4 players, but I don’t know how well it will translate to single player. I’m sure it was showed on an easy difficulty, but in a 4 minute game I won 8-0, could pretty much score at will, and easily would have been over 12, but I was trying to figure out what all the buttons did and attempt to pull off cool moves instead of just running up the score. This is the Mario “sports” game that I liked the least out of the 4 or so that they’ve done. I think this was also an earlier build than the others though, since there were only 2 playable teams and one playable stadium. So I would expect this to be improved and probably end up on par with the other games that they put out in this line up.
NRL Rugby League 2
Squid I checked this game out just for you, since I don’t even know if anyone else on OS cares about Rugby, but I’m sure there have to be a few more of you out there. Honestly I don’t know much about the sport or the rules so I can’t be a big help here, but I got a couple of videos and the gameplay looked really cool. It made me really wanna try the game, because it looked like it would be a lot of fun. They only had the PC version there and I wasn’t real eager to learn the game without the use of a controller so I was just happy to watch the demo go at it. Even though I’m no Rugby expert I will throw out my opinion, it looked prettier and like more fun than whatever Rugby game I looked at for you last year.
NCAA Football 2006
I didn’t get to spend much time with the game, but did recall seeing someone ask about the AI passing %. I did see the AI drop a few passes that looked like pretty routine catches to me, so I would guess that their passing percentage won’t be too much higher than it was previously. But maybe this will be fixed or can be adjusted with the sliders.
Top Spin (PS2) and Top Spin 2 (Xbox 360)
To me the PS2 version looked almost like a straight port from the Xbox version, they said it has been changed, but not dramatically because their goal was to bring the Xbox version to PS2. I know the 360 version has Nike and Reebok as sponsors so there might be a few more sponsors in the PS2 version compared to the Xbox version. I’ll try to remember to ask if you can save in the middle of tournaments because I recall it being annoying that you couldn’t do it in the original for Xbox since some of those tournaments took forever.
The Xbox 360 version seemed to play a little smoother than the PS2 version, but really it did not look overwhelmingly different. I would have hoped to see a large jump in the graphics from the PS2 to Xbox 360, but it definitely wasn’t an impressive leap to me. The game still is not finished so hopefully it will be much prettier at release.
After focusing most of my attention for day one on the 3 games I considered to be the most anticipated sports games open to the public at the show Madden ’06, NCAA ’06, and NBA 2k6 Day 2 was a lot more branching out to make sure the rest of the stuff got covered. There won’t be nearly as much detail as my thoughts on Madden and NCAA, but there was a lot of different games that I saw today.
NBA ’06
This game was pretty early in development but seemed to show good potential. The build was very rough, you could even go out of bounds without it ever being called. But it seemed like they were really taking their sports games seriously now. First they turned MLB around and now this game seems to be headed in the right direction. The graphics didn’t look as nice as NBA 2k6, but I’d expect them to pick it up greatly once they start developing for the powerful PS3.
The game has a story mode, where you create a player, choose what team he is drafted to, then complete a series of 60 or so tasks instead of playing normal games. Instead you are placed in situations such as being tied 5 minutes before the half and having to take your team into the half with a 10 point lead. The story mode is linear so if you don’t pass on your first attempt there is no negative affect to your player or his team, instead you just keep trying until you do succeed. Also in story mode your entire team will be fictional, you create one player and the rest of you team will be automatically created. While in story mode you’ll be able to be a team player or a flashy super star not caring about your team type player, each will affect your teammates ratings. If you pass to your teammates and involve them their ratings will likely go up, if you play like you only care about you, your teammates will likely care less and their rating will drop. While playing you’ll also be trying to get yourself marketed and make more money for yourself in order to help turn your player into a true Superstar.
NBA 06’s mini games were the most fun I’ve had at E3 with a controller so far. The one we saw had two players shooting, there were numbers all along the floor and when you made a shot from that number you got that many points as well as the circle around the number would turn your color (blue or green) you could steal the other players points by shooting from a circle of their color, and also you could take your opponents ball which added a bit of strategy to the game. For instance if your shot went way to the corner of the court it might be faster to wait for the rebound of your opponents shot, and grab his ball which would mean he’d have to go get the ball that was much farther away and give you a chance to pick up an extra shot or two while he was off grabbing the other ball. It was a pretty simple game, easy to pick up and play, but tons of fun, it was great to hear that the mini games will be playable online, since I know those will be a blast for getting a few quick minutes of gaming in when you don’t have time for a full game.
NBA 2k6:
I really feel like I should say something about the game, but really so far it doesn’t seem like there is much to say. At this point I’m disappointed with it, last year at E3 it looked much better than the previous years game, at this point 2k6 looks worse than 2k5. The graphics to me do not look as sharp as 2k5 and there seems to be a collision problem where you kinda get sucked into players and are unable to do anything at these times you just have to wait for the animation to end. All of these things I’m sure could be fixed by the release date, and I would expect them to be fixed, but from what I’ve seen so far the only things that I like about 2k6 more than I liked in 2k5 is the College Hoops style freethrow shooting, the fact that players catch the ball much better on the run, and it does seem like teams might play more like their actual NBA counterparts such as the Heat dumping the ball to Shaq and the Suns running more. At this point it’s hard to tell how much of a change has actually been made to the different teams playing styles though, hopefully I’ll look more into that on Day 3.
Also NBA 2k6 now has the VIP mode that NFL 2k5 had, there is no word yet on what celebrities if any will be in this years game, and just how well this system will translate from the NFL game to the NBA game, but we’ll be meeting with VC tomorrow about it, so hopefully they’ll explain more.
College Hoops 2k6
To be honest I haven’t spent more than 5 minutes with this game yet. Mostly because at this point it is the farthest away from release, and I think because of that it feels very much like College Hoops 2k5 at this point. So far I didn’t really notice any significant changes to the game, which could very well be considered a good thing because of how great last years title was. I should learn more about this title on Friday when we talk to VC.
Xbox 360
Yes the graphics look very nice but really the graphics aren’t what has impressed me so far about the console. I mean any of the new consoles are gonna look amazing, it’s all the other cool stuff that this machine can do that really make it something you feel like you need it. They have really taken the community stuff to a whole new level, as well as the personalization, that has obviously been one of their main priorities with this console and look like they’ve had no problems pulling that off. You’ll be able to access your friends list and their profiles while playing any game, the game you’re playing can even continue to run while you are checking on this. ALL GAMES now will have custom soundtrack, that’s pretty damn nice, plus your custom sound tracks don’t even need to be on your Xbox, apparently if you have your PC networked you can just play your files right off your PC, or even plug in an IPod or another music playing devise straight into the USB slot of the Xbox 360 in order to play your music off of there.
The hard drive is now detachable, so you can take it over to your friends house if you want him to see some of your files, although the only way to transfer stuff from your hard drive to his will still be through memory cards.
You’re always on live, if you want you can make yourself appear offline if you don’t want to be hassled, but while playing a game or watching a movie on your 360 you can now talk to people on your friends list in a voice chat. So you can be working on your Madden Franchise and they can be playing Perfect Dark and you’ll be able to talk to one another while you’re doing your own thing. With the camera you’ll also be able to have a video chat.
The 360 controller is quite comfortable. Moving the black and white buttons to the front of the controller above the triggers was a great move. I was pretty skeptical about the controller from the pictures on the net, but now after getting a chance to play with it I was instantly in love with it. Plus the wireless capability is quite nice, no more rolling up your controller when you’re done with it, now you can just toss it wherever and hope to be able to find it later. Also the controller will apparently be rechargeable.
Blitz The League:
If the cover reminds you of playmakers that’s probably because that’s what this game is going reaching for. This is a game that would have made Vince McMahon quite proud, and seems to be a mix of NFL, XFL, Playmakers, and the prison system mixed together. Within the first minute of viewing it there was a shot up the skirt of cheerleaders, then some illegal hits, followed later by actually watching your players leg break and a dirty trainer coming out onto the field to inject you with painkillers so that you could play hurt. Luckily for those of you that wish to go the high road with this game (can’t be too many of you, since there must be some reason why you are playing it) you can choose to instead of shooting up your player allow them to be carted off and rest up to let their injury heal properly.
The game itself seemed to play like past blitz games, of course they did spice it up a little to add extra violence and some nice lovely TD celebrations such as acting like you’re taking a leak on your goal posts, truly a classy game. I gotta say I think Midway had a great idea with this one. The league is made up of 18 teams, each one has a star player and each of these stars have their own story. In fact Midway has made up about 100 years of the leagues past in order to help give the player a sense of the leagues history and apparently how this rough style of play came to be, part of this history is that now the referees are now all on strike.
Unfortunately the story mode in this is linear, I was hoping for a different story for each team and more of a sense that depending on how you played or what you did you could possibly get a significantly different story each time you go through your career. But that doesn’t sound as if it’s the case. At the heart of it, “Blitz The League” seems to be a supped up copy of previous blitz titles, however I do think that the new direction they are heading in is actually positive since as they said, they kinda went as far as they could go with their NFL style game.
This game will also feature online play for both PS2 and Xbox, as well as a rating of Mature.
Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball:
From what I saw of it, it was pretty disappointing. Although more games are always good since that means more competition and more choices for the consumer, this years baseball market would be a tough one to crack into with MVP, MLB 2k5, and MLB 2006 all being very high quality games. Pennant Chase Baseball didn’t seem to have any aspect to it, that they did better than any of the other games and most all of the game at this point seemed to be below the level of all 3 of it’s competitors which are already released into this years market. I think it is good that Nintendo made a baseball game since this year should give them something to build on for next year, instead of starting from scratch, and with no MVP in 2006 and no likelihood of MLB 2k6 heading to GameCube at least there is hope that gamecube owners will have some option for a new baseball game next year. As for what I saw at E3 it was pretty underwhelming.
Mario Baseball
If I had to choose between this and Nintendo Pennant Chase, I’d actually go with Mario baseball at this point, just based off the fact that at least it is trying to go for something different. It’s not like Mario baseball is trying to directly compete with anything else on the market. It is what it is, if you like Mario Gold and Mario Tennis, and you like baseball, I can’t see why you wouldn’t like this title. It was relatively easy to pick up and play, not a lot of depth to it, I imagine there will be a great deal of unlockables, the graphics were kinda cute, all and all I think it’s exactly what people would expect from a game called Mario Baseball. The fields were also quite unique, there would be fountains or rivers in the way, as well as a normal looking baseball stadium, again this is likely no shock to anyone that has played any of the other Mario “sports” games.
Super Mario Striker
I didn’t even know that Mario was branching out into soccer, so this was a complete surprise for me when I saw it at the show. This might be a lot of fun with 2 or 4 players, but I don’t know how well it will translate to single player. I’m sure it was showed on an easy difficulty, but in a 4 minute game I won 8-0, could pretty much score at will, and easily would have been over 12, but I was trying to figure out what all the buttons did and attempt to pull off cool moves instead of just running up the score. This is the Mario “sports” game that I liked the least out of the 4 or so that they’ve done. I think this was also an earlier build than the others though, since there were only 2 playable teams and one playable stadium. So I would expect this to be improved and probably end up on par with the other games that they put out in this line up.
NRL Rugby League 2
Squid I checked this game out just for you, since I don’t even know if anyone else on OS cares about Rugby, but I’m sure there have to be a few more of you out there. Honestly I don’t know much about the sport or the rules so I can’t be a big help here, but I got a couple of videos and the gameplay looked really cool. It made me really wanna try the game, because it looked like it would be a lot of fun. They only had the PC version there and I wasn’t real eager to learn the game without the use of a controller so I was just happy to watch the demo go at it. Even though I’m no Rugby expert I will throw out my opinion, it looked prettier and like more fun than whatever Rugby game I looked at for you last year.
NCAA Football 2006
I didn’t get to spend much time with the game, but did recall seeing someone ask about the AI passing %. I did see the AI drop a few passes that looked like pretty routine catches to me, so I would guess that their passing percentage won’t be too much higher than it was previously. But maybe this will be fixed or can be adjusted with the sliders.
Top Spin (PS2) and Top Spin 2 (Xbox 360)
To me the PS2 version looked almost like a straight port from the Xbox version, they said it has been changed, but not dramatically because their goal was to bring the Xbox version to PS2. I know the 360 version has Nike and Reebok as sponsors so there might be a few more sponsors in the PS2 version compared to the Xbox version. I’ll try to remember to ask if you can save in the middle of tournaments because I recall it being annoying that you couldn’t do it in the original for Xbox since some of those tournaments took forever.
The Xbox 360 version seemed to play a little smoother than the PS2 version, but really it did not look overwhelmingly different. I would have hoped to see a large jump in the graphics from the PS2 to Xbox 360, but it definitely wasn’t an impressive leap to me. The game still is not finished so hopefully it will be much prettier at release.
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