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Archives for 2004

Gaming Blogs for you

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As I peruse the gaming blogs out there, I just want to highlight some of the stuff I’ve read that I thought was cool that week. This is my first attempt at this, so bear with me, this week might be kind of short. So without further ado:

Anyone who plays video games and surf the web knows about Penny Arcade. Last year, in an effort to show the public that gamers aren’t anti-social wierdos whose actions are driven by violent video games set up a charity to help their local hospitals. Response was tremendous, and they’re doing it again

As a shameless plug, I’ll direct you to my review of NCAA 2005 for the Gamecube. I don’t know if posting reviews here will become common, but I used to write reviews for the website epinions.com and enjoyed it, so we’ll see.

NCAA 2005 Review (Gamecube)

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B00020V4RG.01._AA_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpgNCAA 2004 ruled my Gamecube for a long time last year. Sure, it came out so I could play a little Viewtiful Joe or Need For Speed, but I played NCAA 2004 almost daily. As football season came to a close, my NCAA time dwindled but was still played pretty frequently. When details of NCAA 2005 started appearing, my appetite was slowly whipped into a frenzy. Great things were promised. I’m here to report that most of the promises have been delivered, but unfortunately not everything.

I’m not going to rehash the NCAA 2005 basics. Go read my NCAA 2004 review for the lowdown. I just want to touch on what’s new and what I think about it.

The biggest addition has been home-field advantage and the effect crowds have. I am an Ohio State Buckeye fan. (It has been a painful year, but as a fan you’ve got to go through the bad to savor the good.) Anyway, I’ve been to Ohio Stadium, also known as the Horseshoe. I’ve been there for Michigan games. I’ve been there when we beat Michigan. The feeling and atmosphere is indescribable It’s electric. It’s a spiritual experience. I know it affects those players. It has to! It’s affects me and I’m just a humble fan. NCAA 2005 has done a superb job recreating that feeling. College football is about emotion and NCAA 2005 conveys that emotion (to a point). When you play somewhere like the Horseshoe or the Big House or the Swamp, it is loud. You can barely here the announcers. When the crowd gets rocking, the screen shakes and the controller vibrates. It feels like a Saturday in November. I applaud EA for that; they have captured what College Football Saturday feels like. A+

The next addition is the match up stick. Using the C-stick, you can see how your team matches up against your opponent and you can see if your players (and theirs) are rattled, if the crowd is getting to them. You can see who’s good and who stinks. Another great addition, it adds a dimension of strategy. Your number one receiver is lined up against a rattled freshman? You’ve got your guy. It’s pretty nice. A

Another thing the C-stick is used for are “Big Hits”. This is a pretty nifty little thing; you get close to making a tackle and wham on the C-stick. If it’s timed right, you’ll make a big hit and maybe even cause a fumble. It’s especially effective on kick-offs. Hard to time but rewarding. B+

Dynasty mode has been revamped, too. There’s the added dimension of running a clean football program – discipline. If your players run afoul of the rules (or the law) you’ll have to take appropriate actions (or you can act like Bobby Bowden and pretend they never happened). You can suspend players for a quarter, a game, a season, whatever you want. But be warned: the more you shrug it off, the more the NCAA will start breathing down your neck. Don’t appease them and you might lose scholarships or TV appearances. It’s happened to me, it isn’t pretty. It’s a great idea in theory, but not executed perfectly. You have plenty of “discipline points” each week so this usually isn’t a problem unless you want it to be. B-

Celebrations have been added, including fans with signs and fans doing dances. I hate to say it, but the fan models look bad. They look alien and all wrong. Now you can celebrate after big plays and touchdowns. I have a love-hate relationship with the celebrations. Some are sweet (hushing the away crowd after a touchdown is a personal favorite). But I tire of big celebrations in the real game. Just make the play, congratulate your teammates and get back to the huddle. No need to showboat and dance around. Just play the game and save your antics for the NFL. Ranting aside, the new celebrations are well done. B+

Those are the major additions. There have been some minor tweaks as well. Everyone who plays NCAA 2005 knows that Dynasty mode is what keeps them coming back. There are some welcome additions there, too. You can allocate resources to training, discipline and recruiting as you see fit. Recruiting (my favorite part of them game) has also been tweaked. The biggest change for my money has been the fact that there are fewer five-star (blue-chip) prospects compared to 2004. In 2004 there was too many five-star players. Now it’s common to only see three or four five-star players at each position. I like that. You can also scout a player before you recruit him. That gives you a little more info than what you get to begin with. Things like his discipline, his understanding of the game, that kind of thing. Another welcome addition. B+

There are others I’m sure I’m missing, but those are the ones I felt worth mentioning. But all is not perfect. The graphics still leave a lot to be desired. It’s frustrating to see games like Madden and ESPN NFL look great while NCAA 2005 looks three years old. Some updated graphics are there, it’s just not enough. There are still frustrating glitches in the sound and commentary, but it’s not a deal breaker. Control is pretty much the same but I still yearn for a little more control over the passing game. It’s there but hit or miss. And the physics for the football! Good night! It’s like a balloon out there, bouncing around, unbound by any laws of gravity and momentum. This is nitpicking, to be sure, but it can go unmentioned.

Overall, it’s a great update to NCAA 2004. It’s unfortunate that we still have to pay full price for what really is nothing more than an expansion pack, but so be it. Xbox and PS2 owners get online play, which would be cool if I had the time, but I don’t really miss it. In the end, it’s unfortunate but it isn’t as great as 2004 was. It pains me not to rate this five buttons mashed, but there are some issues that bring this down. I can only go four buttons mashed on this one. If you don’t have 2004, don’t hesitate picking this one up. If you do, strongly consider the additions and go from there. I say go for it, but it isn’t a cheap upgrade.

Minor glitches in NCAA 2005

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Dynasty mode in NCAA is definitely the biggest draw for me. Starting as a new team running with the big boys in Division 1-A is tough but it’s rewarding. I also love “Create-a-team”, being able to pick everything from location to uniforms to mascots. If you make a team that doesn’t have one of the “canned” mascots/nicknames, when the announcer refers to your team, it’s either “the home team” or “the away team”. So in my recent dynasty, I’ve recreated my high school, down to the school colors and team mascot, The Bears. Well, there seems to be some confusion. Sometimes I’m referred to as the “Bearcats” and other times it’s just the “Bears”. It’s a bit frustrating that something seemingly so simple (in terms of programming) can be so horribly screwed up.

In NCAA 2004 it was picking up a fumble, running for about 5 yards and hearing the announcer scream “fumble recovered for a return of seventy three yards!” Right.

These are just minor things, but they do get my goat sometimes.

My gaming “queue”

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So I’ve added a new list to my “what I’m playing list”, my list of games that I have waiting to play. I’ve amassed a decent library thanks to gaming deals I’ve found a CAG. The links on my lists are links to Amazon, if you’re feeling like supporting my burgeoning site, I’d appreciate you using my links.

Top Five Football Games

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This isn’t so much a Top Five Football Games list as it is more of a progression of my football gaming experience. I mentioned earlier that football games have evolved over the years. So I’ve listed five games that have had an impact on my football gaming experience.

#5 Mattel Handheld Football 2 – The first in the list is the game I played at night before I had a Game Boy. Not much to see here. I never was able to reconcile the total unfairness of the first iterations of video football games – there was always one more offensive player than defensive. In the case of the Mattel Handheld game, it was three red dashes versus four other red dashes. I don’t remember much about the game play here but I don’t remember anything about spin moves or stiff arms. Just those red dashes.

#4 Super Challenge Football (Atari 2600) – Ahh, my first console football game – Super Challenge Football. Anyone who’s played this game knows exactly why I loved it – if you missed a tackle, no big deal! Just run to the left, you’ll pop out on the right side, perfectly positioned to make a play. As you can see from the screen shots, about twenty yards fit on the screen at the time. So when you made it to one end of the screen, you popped out on the other side. No side scrolling here. Again, I don’t remember too much about the game play, but I do remember being a sweet safety. Nobody got through more than one screen against me!

#3 Tecmo Bowl (NES) – Many will say Tecmo Super Bowl was the best NES football game, possibly the best football game of the 20th century, but Tecmo Bowl is my choice for #3. Of course, it had its quirks, like unstoppable players including Lawrence Taylor, but it was a great game. It still didn’t have a full team of eleven players, but it was getting close. I had a friend who actually keep track of stats between games (Super Tecmo Bowl did this) and he even chose an MVP for each of his seasons. I didn’t get that into it, but we sure played the heck out of that game.

#2 John Madden Football (PC) – I couldn’t make a list with out paying homage to the game that brought football video games to the life. I had John Madden Football for the PC almost fifteen years ago. The thing I remember most about this version was being able to draw up plays on a chalk board, with X’s and O’s. You could then simulate the plays and watch them real-time. I remember drawing up plays that had the whole offensive line pulling to block on a sweep. As I remember, that play didn’t work too well.

#1 NCAA 2004/5 (Gamecube) – Of course, this game is number one on my list. I am a HUGE college football fan, and NCAA 2004/5 is my number one game. Madden 2005 or ESPN NFL 2K5 might have better graphics, more recognizable stars and more all around polish, but for my money, it doesn’t get any better than Dynasty Mode in NCAA. The graphics are great, but the dynasty mode is so much more than the game play. It’s about running a high impact college program. It’s training players, recruiting them and getting them to stay out of trouble (discipline was added to 2005). I was a bit disappointed with 2005’s enhancements but it is still a fabulous game with a great replay upside.

Simple games

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Sometimes simple games are the most addictive and engrossing. I enjoyed, to a certain extent, the strategy in Final Fantasy: Tatics Advance, but it really wasn’t too hard. There are many characters available and you can switch “jobs” anytime you want to improve a certain area of a character, making your characters a formidable fighting force, effectively reducing the amount of strategy and forethought before each fight. More time was spent determining which members of your party were best suited for the laws of the encounter. It was fun and midly addictive, but it didn’t burn too many brain cells to beat.

Now that I’m back to playing Advance Wars, I really think it is a better game. I think its appeal is its simplicity. There are only a handful of units available and each commanding officer has a certain power that gives him a brief advantage. Moves require chess-like preparation, avoiding long range missile attacks while considering the best defensive position for the next computer turn. The strategy component of AW is much more pronounced. Each move will impact the next. When I played Age of Empires, my strategy and style was build up a big army and then send them to their death while I pumped out more units. Wars in Age of Empires usually become wars of attrition. Not so in Advance Wars. Often you have a limited arsenal and you’ll need each and every unit. Brute force usually isn’t the best answer (unless your C.O. is Max). The computer can be brutal, too. But while the computer AI is tough, I wonder what a human opponent would be like.

Paper Mario Reviews

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Gamespot gives Paper Mario 2 a great review, as do IGN and Gamespy (surpising, IGN and Gamespy give the same game high marks?). This is good news. I posted earlier on EvilAvatar (I’m not linking to the article, since the comments degenerated into fanboy rants that I abhor) that I was getting pessimistic about Nintendo’s outlook, but my outlook has changed.

I really think the next 2-3 months (read: Holiday Season) are going to be great for Nintendo. The DS is starting to turn a lot of heads and should put up a good fight against Sony’s PSP. Metroid Prime 2 should be stellar, along with a bunch of other games. Seeing Paper Mario get a good review is great, I really think this is what is going to get the ball rolling for Nintendo. Good for them! It does my heart good.

Weekend gaming and Video Game Football

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This weekend didn’t involve as much video gaming as we had anticipated. Other things happened, like going outdoors and actually breathing fresh air! We rode the four-wheelers a bunch, watched some college football (my Buckeyes are reeling, but I’m not dismayed) and played some NCAA 2005 on the Gamecube.

Watching a few football games this weekend made me realize how far football games have come but also how much farther they can still go. While it is unrealistic to think a gamer would want to spend 3 hours playing a game of football (3 hours being the average length of a college or pro football game) I think there can still be more realistic additions to both the graphics and AI. For one, collision detection still has a while before it’s perfect. Body parts still go through other bodies as if they were ghosts, collisions occur and bodies contort in unrealistic (in a Newtonian Physics sense) manners, I could go on. There also should be in place ways to play other positions. My brother-in-law doesn’t really like to play offense, so when we play co op, he plays one of the down linemen. He thinks holding ‘X’ keeps his guy engaged, but I’m not sure about that. If there was a way to make a sort of “mini game” to determine the amount of success one has, would be an improvement. I really like the 1st person mode in ESPN 2k5 (even though I’m not good at it) but that would only work for one person.

With respect to the AI, it is getting better but the play calling can be very predictable and sometimes blatantly wrong. I’ve had the computer driving on me at the end of the first half (in NCAA 2005) and it lets the clock roll until there is less than five seconds on the play clock before it hikes the ball. In the process, it loses precious seconds to set up the next play or get ready to kick a field goal.

But as I said, football games have come a long way. I’ll be going over my top 5 football video games on Friday. Hopefully this will start a trend of posting top 5 lists every once and a while.