Author Bio
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
01:17 PM - May 25, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Text sims have always been, and likely always will be, a niche market. I will be shocked if you ever see an Out of the Park Baseball TV commercial during the World Series or a Front Office Football ad run during the Super Bowl. But even though their market share in the big picture of sports gaming will always be small, text-sim fans are loyal -- sometimes even obsessive. When we like something, we support it.
There are a number of long-running text sims on the market right now that have enjoyed a fair amount of critical acclaim. However, there are others that had a lot going for them yet never broke through for whatever reason and were discontinued. I have put together a list of three text sims that I would like to see resurrected. In addition, I am interested in hearing from all the loyal readers out there about discontinued text sims you folks would like to see make a comeback.
Read More - Which Text-Sims Need to Make a Comeback?
Thursday, May 13, 2010
12:56 PM - May 13, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Two months ago I wrote a piece titled "Does MLB 10: The Show Belong in the Text-Sim Hall of Fame?" There were 33 reader comments about the piece and only one was somewhat positive. The other 32 commenters wondered why Operation Sports would bother publishing something so silly.I stand behind the content of the piece, but I would like a mulligan on the headline. Obviously, The Show does not belong in the text-sim hall of fame. My main goal was to compare The Show to other text sims and see how it stacked up. Instead of giving the piece a generic title like "How Does the Show Compare to a Text Sim?" I wanted to make it a little a more interesting. I put text-sim hall of fame in the headline thinking it would get a reaction. It did.
Read More - Should we compare console games to text sims?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
02:14 PM - May 4, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
With the release of OOTP 11 and Baseball Mogul 2011 in the last couple of weeks, I did not think I would have time to play Fast Break College Basketball 2 (FBCB2). Because God only gave us 24 hours in a day, and because I’ve chosen to have an actual life that involves a real job, a wife and drinking, I planned to push back playing and reviewing FBCB2 until next month.One night I decided to fire up the game up to kill some time before bed. Three hours later the wife was yelling at me to turn off the light and go to sleep. The reason was very clear: I was hooked on another text sim.
Read More - Fast Break College Basketball 2
Thursday, April 22, 2010
12:55 PM - April 22, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
I swore that I would not mention OOTP 11 in my Baseball Mogul 2011 review. Mogul is not OOTP, so why bother comparing the two? Well, perhaps because they were released around the same time, or perhaps because I just could not help myself, I have already broken my pledge.What you want out of your baseball text sim will likely shape your opinion of Baseball Mogul 2011. If you want a fun, simple, nuts and bolts simulation of baseball, you will enjoy Mogul. If you want complete customization, immersion and bells and whistles, Mogul is not for you (and you should probably check out OOTP 11 -- blast there I go again).
Read More - Baseball Mogul 2011
Monday, April 12, 2010
03:01 PM - April 12, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Despite playing basically the same song over and over again, AC/DC remains one of the most popular rock bands ever. It would have been easy for Out of the Park Baseball to take an AC/DC-type career path, adding token features here and there and simply riding the wave of its past success with each subsequent new release.
Thankfully, unlike AC/DC, the OOTP developers remain hungry and do not continue to repeat the same exact formula with each release.
OOTP 11 is no exception. The latest version of the acclaimed baseball text sim features a revamped fielding engine, improvements to historical play and several other enhancements that collectively add up to another stellar and highly addictive game.
Read More - Out of the Park Baseball 11 Review
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
12:17 PM - March 23, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Out of the Park Baseball has always attempted to be all things to all baseball text simmers. Want to replay past seasons, start a modern-day franchise or join an online league? It is all possible, and more, with Out of the Park (OOTP). OOTP 11 will soon be released, and it looks like the latest version will make the OOTP experience even more immersive.
OOTP Baseball is a text sim that puts you in control of a baseball franchise. The main feature of OOTP is the ability to customize the game how you want to play it. Whether you are into historical, modern-day, fictional or online play, OOTP lets you set your league’s rules, era, alignment, financial settings and so on to your liking. OOTP is generally acknowledged as one of the most in-depth text sims ever created. This makes the game difficult to summarize in a single paragraph, so let us just move right into the preview.
Read More - Improvements Everywhere in OOTP 11
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
01:08 PM - March 17, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
MLB 10: The Show is one of the most impressive looking sports games ever made. Stadiums are re-created almost to perfection, player models look nearly identical to their real-life counterparts and the game of baseball’s little nuances are captured throughout each game. The gameplay is also refreshingly realistic. You are rewarded for working the count while batting and punished if you do not mix up your pitches on the mound.Simply put, The Show deserves most of the praise it gets. But how does the game stack up as a text sim? Text simmers are notoriously finicky and often nerdy. That deadly combination makes text simmers some of the most critical and hard to please gamers out there. Text simmers need realism, customization and screens that are easy to navigate. If we do not have those three core elements, our attention span shrinks exponentially.
That said, can baseball text simmers add The Show to the baseball text sim hall of fame? Does it fit in with greats like Out of the Park Baseball, Strat-o-Matic and Diamond Mind?
Read More - Does MLB 10: The Show Belong in the Text-Sim Hall of Fame?
Thursday, March 4, 2010
10:46 PM - March 4, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Welcome to the first edition of the Operation Sports Text-Sim Encyclopedia. This will be the most comprehensive database of sports text sims out there, and it is being made available to you free of charge. We will also be going door-to-door selling hardcover versions for $29.95, so consider yourself lucky to get the online version for free. The staff at Operation Sports has put years of research into this project. Marriages were strained, families torn apart. A lot of cheap beer was consumed.Was it all worth it? Oh yeah! Where else are you going to find links to a dirt-track motorcycle racing and a handball text sim? However, before paging through the encyclopedia, be sure to read the disclaimer.
Read More - The Operation Sports Text Sim Encyclopedia
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
04:20 PM - March 3, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
On the surface, being the general manager of a basketball team seems like a sweet gig. There are only 15 players on a roster, eight players that actually matter, and five on the floor at any given time. Find a superstar to lead your team, surround him with a few key role players and you should be set for the next decade. Well, it is not quite that simple. A GM’s job has gotten tougher thanks to an influx of foreign talent, the NBA Draft and a salary-cap system that requires a Ph.D. to understand. On top of that, general managers also have to worry about their $100 million star player pulling a gun in the locker room or dogging it after cashing those first couple of paychecks.
With that in mind, Gary Gorski and the staff at Wolverine Studios want to give you a taste of what it is like to run a professional basketball team with Draft Day Sports Pro Basketball (DDSPB). The sequel is due out in the near future and expands on the success of the first version. DDSPB 2 makes you the GM of a basketball franchise. You are responsible for drafting, free agency, trades, lineups, team chemistry, the salary cap and any other tasks that come with building a success team.
Read More - Draft Day Sports Pro Basketball 2 Attempts to Expand Beyond the NBA
Monday, February 15, 2010
02:44 PM - February 15, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
Believe it or not, all text simmers are not complete snobs. Some of us enjoy taking a break from staring at statistics and doing a little button mashing. However, text simmers are a picky bunch. No matter how hard certain game designers try to woo us, we will probably never completely come over to the dark side. Simulation-style features may grab our attention for a while, and may even get us to acknowledge that games like Madden occasionally get a few things right.But the only way text simmers will truly embrace an Madden-style game is if, well, it holds up against other text sims. We need realism, customization, challenges, meaningful evaluation methods and, yes, even graphics.
So I will use Madden 10 as our example. What would it take to turn Madden into a top-flight football text sim while at the same time maintaining its position as the king of football games?
Read More - How to make Madden appealing to text-simmers
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
04:48 PM - February 10, 2010. Posted by RaychelSnr. Written by Adam Czech
What began as an effort to create a simple football text sim with an online-play focus is evolving into something bigger. Professional Football Simulator (PFS) lead developer Brooks Piggott recently released a new update to his promising game that enhances the single-player mode and adds other new features. While it is premature to say that PFS will one day overtake Front Office Football as king of American football text sims, PFS definitely has a bright future. For the uninitiated, FPS is a text sim where players run a football team through single or multiple seasons. Players are in control of team functions such as drafting, free agency and lineups. The game features online multiplayer and single-player modes as well as numerous customization options.
Now, if you have played Front Office Football, you likely already understand what PFS is all about. In a text sim, you do not control the physical action on the field. Instead, you run a team the same way a general manager or coach would, drafting prospects, signing free agents, setting lineups and managing day-to-day team operations. The initial goal of FPS was to make these tasks less daunting to inexperienced text simmers.
Read More - Professional Football Simulator Continues to Grow
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