Major League Baseball 2K8 Review

[Blzer]

Well, 2KLA, I must say... yet another year where virtually every video gaming company rates your game lower than your competition. I only hope you know where you need to prioritize next year so that you're no longer "playing second fiddle" to your opponent.

[Zackdawg]

Quote: Originally Posted by Diesel3649

I have to respectfully disagree with your view that it's our mindset that needs to change. My mindset when buying a video game or anything for that matter, is that I expect it to perform as advertised on day one. For example we where told that the game would perform near 60fps most of the time, and at worst would not drop much below that. This is not what we got. Now I don't think the problem here is my mindset. In order to get the game to play with a better frame rate than the game 2K gave me, I had to disable my VIP, which inturn disabled my card collecting feature. Thats not what was advertised. That is unacceptable. If I purchased a brand new car, which only ran correctly if I kept the headlights, and the wipers off, it would damn well not be acceptable, and definetly not tolerated. Now I understand that the comparison between cars and video games is apples and oranges, my point is still the same, I expect quality, fully functioning products when I plop my money down, that's my mindset. Expecting a consumer to change that, and accept anything less, is very dangerous in my opinion.

Very well said. Why would any consumer demand less?

[Trevytrev11]

Two people in, or formerly in, the industry (Kush Gamer and DrJones) have both said that there is pressure from the higher ups for high review scores. I wonder what kind of reaction is going on behind the scenes with both the development team as well as the Take Two/2K executives. While I appreciate the overall direction this game is going, I wonder if the company has the same confidence.

[RoyceBrown]

Quote: Originally Posted by Slizeezyc

So the first thing I think of is sort of a chicken or the egg type deal. Was patching necessary because of technological/marketing/programming advances and pitfalls, or because the Internet is there and it's possible to fix a game after it ships? Have people accepted patching as just a part of gaming now and that's also a contributing factor? There's certainly room to argue each side of that argument. The other thing I think about though is: In what other tech consumer world do people accept "broken" products? It's the same argument that's raged in the PC world for a while really. When a game ships on the PC and then it doesn't work or you need to DL a ton of patches or drivers, in what other tech market would that be accepted? I have trouble really thinking of one where people just accept buying a "broken" product. Continuing on with that PC point. Consoles have thrived in large part due to standardized components and thus little to no need to upgrade. It's a flat fee and you know all the games will work the same and all developers can develop with the same tools. I would say that mindset means that patching post-release won't ever really be an acceptable excuse -- at least in the near future. PC gamers are in a constant state of change as it comes to hardware and PC devs have to develop for many different hardware combos, and all that mixed just leads to a more acceptable atmosphere for tweaking post-release. Even so you're starting to see some more standardization even in the PC market. But returning back to the original point of the review. I think Dave/Bly certainly took into consideration how the actual game itself played (obvious to say I know but nonetheless), and while the frame rate was a detriment on the experience itself, if he didn't at least enjoy the core of the game he wouldn't have given it an above average score -- that's what I get from the review at least.

People NEVER should accept a half finished product needing MAJOR fixing.

In the software industry (outside of video games) there is a common idea involving beta testing. Why video game companies can't get privy to this concept is beyond me.

In essence we all paid 2KLA $59.99 to be a bunch of beta testing monkeys for MLB 2K8.

This game should have never gone to market in its current state, future patching notwithstanding.



This game should have been released as a FREE beta test, and the community could have made the observations/suggestions/criticisms that obviously sites like OS didn't/couldn't make.

[fistofrage]

Quote: Originally Posted by RoyceBrown

People NEVER should accept a half finished product needing MAJOR fixing. In the software industry (outside of video games) there is a common idea involving beta testing. Why video game companies can't get privy to this concept is beyond me. In essence we all paid 2KLA $59.99 to be a bunch of beta testing monkeys for MLB 2K8. This game should have never gone to market in its current state, future patching notwithstanding. This game should have been released as a FREE beta test, and the community could have made the observations/suggestions/criticisms that obviously sites like OS didn't/couldn't make.

I think that all sports games are Beta tests at this point. The games come out every year so all we're doing is giving them feedback for next year. All of these sports games have always had flaws in them that keep them from being a sim, but now it seems like 2k is putting flaws in the game that prevent them from even being fun. Its a crying shame too, because they have a community of 5000 here that would do their Quality Control for them for free, but Anyway.

I am glad that 2k Hoops isn't going to be produced next year. The patch made the game good enough and now I don't have to worry about what they'll foul up next year. I am also sure too that if the Members of OS didn't chirp so much about the flaws, there wouldn't have been a patch. So in those regards my 50+ hours of free Beta Testing went to good use. So keep squawking about this game too and hopefully they'll fix it. They are killing themselves though by not putting out a good game in the first place. Couple this with their atrocious marketing and its no wonder why 2k is circling the drain.

[baa7]

Quote: Originally Posted by fistofrage

I think that all sports games are Beta tests at this point.

I don't agree. FIFA 08, NHL 08, that other baseball game on the PS2... all those games are super. FIFA in particular is an amazingly polished game. Now 2K releasing beta versions... THAT'S a different story. They've been doing that for three years now with all their games that Kush/2K LA has produced.

[phatboy54]

This will forever be remembered as the game that led me to sell my 360. After a fun but repetitive (hey, six interceptions again!) run with NCAA Football, I was fired up for this release. It took about 5 games and countless hours dissecting the sliders on this message board to give up. As an older gamer (early 30's), I just don't care enough about spending the time to get a perfect sim these days. I'm buying a Wii and some beer. Something was lost when we jumped to the Next Gen systems and that was the fun factor.

[Heelfan71]

Quote: Originally Posted by phatboy54

This will forever be remembered as the game that led me to sell my 360. After a fun but repetitive (hey, six interceptions again!) run with NCAA Football, I was fired up for this release. It took about 5 games and countless hours dissecting the sliders on this message board to give up. As an older gamer (early 30's), I just don't care enough about spending the time to get a perfect sim these days. I'm buying a Wii and some beer. Something was lost when we jumped to the Next Gen systems and that was the fun factor.

buy a ps3 and the show.