Good:
-The lighting and color depth have added enough on their own to boost the graphics considerably for me. Also, when playing the game on an HDTV (rather than just watching youtube videos) I can notice the difference in the models. The stocky leg thing is kind of still there, but seems to be more an issue with how the uniforms fit. Skinny guys have smaller builds, etc. Looks much better .
-Pitching was always a strong point control-scheme wise and that's still great. The variable calls hit me a few times and that, coupled with a bigger gap between the control of a Tim Lincecum and Barry Zito make the overall experience more rewarding. It still felt a bit easy, but I'm not worried about that (changed difficulty and sliders in full game can easily solve that).
-Hitting felt better and FINALLY has a better sense of feel for the hit types. It's something that had bothered me with 2K all along-that the hitting felt kind of weightless-like you were playing with a broomstick rather than a bat. This has been greatly improved IMO. It still has moments where it all feels too "light" but it's more infrequent and not as distracting for me.
-Fielding just looked and felt better overall. More weight to the movements and smoother animation. I haven't seen errors yet, but I've only played a handful of games (and given that they aren't full games to boot, it's not unreasonable).
-Animations in general seemed smoother (though some of the same culprits from previous iterations still exist). -The reactionary animations add a lot to the flow and immersion of the game as do some of the little things like seeing the bat drop after a hit, etc. 2K is starting to do a much better job on some of the details and it's nice to see.
Not so Good:
Pitches still have a floating sensation for the user. The FB doesn't arc as much, but it doesn't have the right pop to it.
-Too much going on on-screen-I agree with Swaldo on the flashing pop-ups. Not a huge deal, but it's a lot going on and distracts from the baseball aspect and screams "ARCADE!!!" at me. I'm hoping that the PC version will be able to resolve some of this via mods.
-Some of the same animation problems still exist. The walking still gets robotic and weird. It looks like they did something to it (it's less frequent), but it now shifts from a normal looking animation to that old robotic one...it's just odd.
In fact, I've noticed it's doing this in a few circumstances (odd transition from older look to smoother look) It's like an overlay of sorts. Like the newer, smoother, animations are resting atop the old, herky-jerky ones rather than the old ones simply being gone. I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but it's just odd.
-Also there is some odd transitions in the animations still. Sometimes they look silky smooth and others it's like they skipped a frame. It might be a small framerate thing people have already mentioned or might be a goof with the animation. This is the type of visual thing that might simply be demo build related though, so we'll see.
There are some other issues I've run into, but I feel comfortable in chalking those up to either it being a demo or it being difficulty level related and easily solvable (adjustable difficulty, sliders, etc) in the full game.
Other observations:
-Have yet to see a single miscue in the field, but given that some are saying they've seen quite a bit, I'm not concerned. If anything, I'm impressed that they aren't forcing it to show off the additions.
-I love the concept of different fielders getting the indicator at different times based on ratings, but I'm hoping it's better in the full build. There is still occurrence of "suction" when you're close to making the catch.
That's no biggie (it smooths out animations) but for a guy like Pat Burrell who gets his indicator at the last possible second, it seems to render the new system somewhat moot at times. I've had several instances where I couldn't see a fielding circle but found where I needed to be as I got sucked into the early stages of a catch animation.
Overall, I liked it. It's a bit arcadey, but that's the style, I guess. MVP had that going on too, but it still played well, so that's not a knock. It's not far and away different than 2K10, but it seems my issues with that game have largely been addressed. I'll need some time with the full game so I can make adjustments, but 2K11 is off to a good start for me. The good news is, that my issues with the demo were mostly minor and the good far outweighs the bad thus far.
Let me also add this to summarize (and add a bit of a disclaimer...lol): I came away from the 2K9 and 2K10 demo mostly positive as well as I could notice the improvements in each game (and I'm willing to bet I was feeling pretty good after playing 2K10's demo-if it weren't for bugs and nagging issues, that game would have been pretty darn good IMO), but problems crept up over time and made it hard to enjoy them. So, we'll see how that plays out over time with 2K11, but after the first run-through with this demo, I stopped critiquing and simply lost track just playing the game.
During that time, I didn't get distracted by the flaws because I was simply having fun. With the other two, I found more issues as I kept playing. So far, with 2K11, I got more into it as I kept playing (which I would imagine would only increase with more options to be able to tune). I know for fans of the series that might not be new, but for me, that's the first time in years I've been able to say that about a 2K baseball game and, while it's too early to say for sure, that's a very good sign IMO.
03-01-2011, 04:43 PM
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