Unfortunately, it was a lot of things a three-inning demo can't show (broken Franchise mode, freezing, stat inaccuracies/glitches, AI coaching/pitching change issues, etc.) that cost 2K my business last season. Here's hoping they got that stuff right as well.
Agreed. With every piece of info that has come out, my worries have lessened.
Editing stances/windups? Check that off.
Realistic stats (still a concern, but with pro seeming to produce an easy game but not too easy, I'm confident sliders can fix it, or maybe even all-star or legend default difficulty could do the trick)
Game killing bugs are the only thing that really would ruin this game for me, as of now, based on what I've seen. (like the first base glitch or OF drop glitch from last year.) But with a day one patch scheduled? Maybe the best baseball game I've got in a long time.
I like the hitting camera for telling balls and strikes but I hate it cause I just can't time the pitches at all. I've yet to score a run in about 10 games. I've never had trouble hitting in any other baseball game.
I just got demolished 6-0 by the Yankees, I think I got one or two hits and drew a walk. .
Okay, for those who have gotten the demo and played it.....
do you get the feel that you will be shut down by pitchers on occasion? One of the problems with 2k9 was that it was far to easy to get base hits. The average number of hits per team last year ranged from 8-10 per game, but in 2k9 I would manage 15-25 on far too consistent a basis.
That wouldn't be a problem, if I would have games where I only managed 4 hits, or 5 hits.....
So.... does it seem like there will be games where the opposing pitcher throws a 2 hit shutout? A 6 hitter?
First, forgive me for repeating things that may have already been discussed. I know I'm late...and I only skimmed through all 25 pages.
I must say, I was left very unimpressed after seeing the game play video. I was holding out hope that the demo would show me some things to be happy about...and it certainly did.
First, to get this out of the way, no...it's not perfect or anywhere close. There are some lingering issues that anyone who's played 2K baseball will recognize right away. Also it's important to clarify that I'm making these impressions SOLELY on my experience with the demo. There are no profound insights into what the final game with slider adjustments might yield or issue that could crop up over time. That should be obvious, but I figure it bears mentioning for all of our over-analyzers here.
That aside, on with the impressions...
The Cons:
-The basic animations are still a bit jerky (though they are somewhat improved). That overall robotic look still shows up quite a bit. Running in particular looks really rough at times (still ).
-Uniform and texture issues are still there (clean helmets still look a bit rubbery and the numbers, etc have already been beat to death, but yeah...they're bad).
-While certainly very-much toned down, there are still some issues with physics in terms of hits. I swung late on an outside pitch (tailing away, at that) and pulled it. This only happened a couple times though and both while fooling with the classic hitting. The swing stick seemed right on.
-VERY minor, but the constant cuts to the dugout and all my teammates doing synchronized cheering went from mildly comical to annoying pretty fast.
-Throwing still feels a bit loose. Responsive is one thing, but it feels like hair-trigger response for the meter (this is more a preference thing, I guess...some others might like that).
-There were several instances were the AI had a clean chance for a DP and didn't take it. I've never seen them go the short way for an out either. There were also a couple of weird hitches in their throws (like collect, stop, **** arm, fire)...not sure if that was a frame-rate hiccup or an animation glitch. I only saw that a couple times though.
The Pros:
-Overall, animations look WAY better and pitching, batting, and fielding obviously all got some love. Pitching in particular looks very smooth.
-Speaking of very smooth, the game is night and day compared to 2K9 in terms of feel. EVERYTHING feels much smoother and more responsive. The hit stick (something I've not been a fan of) feels very responsive, but not in a jerky way. It just feels "right". Hard to explain, but I like it.
-Pitching has been good in terms of feel for a while IMO, but now the results seem to add up too. I actually missed some gestures (something that never happened in 2K9 unless I was WAY off) and the result was appropriate (a ball, a hanger-not a meatball though!). I actually walked a guy with Halladay trying to get the batter to chase. It seems the game is as advertised in terms of their focus here. The AI took pitches, I had some good battles, and my strikeouts felt rewarding and even earned. Good stuff!
-Fielding has improved too. No longer is the user control all over the place. Players in general seem to have more weight to how they feel and move. Players seem to gather or perform some type of realistic slow down in tracking the ball. Much improved here.
Lighting. The lighting is 100% better and really looks nice in HD. The colors pop a bit more and everything just looks less washed out than 2K9.
-Stadium looked great and they finally seem to be getting away from that more cartoony feel. I have yet to see a stadium I haven't thought looked good in the previews. On your own TV, it looks all the better!
Misc.:
-Visuals are hit and miss. The faces range from quite good (many of the big name Yankees looked good) to bad. I fear the long-standing 2K blank faces for lesser knowns will still be the norm.
-On my HDTV, the game looked much better than anything we've seen to this point. The game is hit or miss graphically, but it's not ugly by any means. On the PC, if I can get those numbers and color palette issues fixed, I'd say it's a solid 8 visually.
anyway, long I know...lol..but there are far more positives than negatives for me. I went from sitting on the fence to seriously considering purchase. I rarely purchase anything day 1 (only a few games/developers have earned my trust in that regard) but it would honestly take a horrible rental experience for me to not pick this up for the PC. I'm all but sold!
Yea, i'm a complete dumbazz. I just checked that out. RT is for diving catches if there's anyone else to lazy to look. Now i'm having trouble stealing i hold either the L trigger or LB like it says and i don't go. I can lead off but not steal.
You can lead off with the L-Trigger or the LB than hold it(L-Trigger) till you feel it vibrate and let go of the L-Trigger when you want to steal
The lighting is so much more improved compared to last year. I love how VC implemented transitional lighting in the demo I've seen some really incredible shadow/lighting changes not only from each game, but each inning.
It is amazing how much they cleaned up all the fielding and swinging animations I rarely have seen an animation from either type that was jerky or questionable. I had a mound visit with CC, and Joe Girardi came out wearing his Yankees team jacket and it was the most realistic manager model I have EVER seen in a video game.
Just wanted to give a big applause to 2k for a great effort in improving this game. We now know why this demo won't be released until after the release date on the PS3. I have only played one game and will get to play more tonight but it only took one inning to impress me enough that this game is leaps and bounds better than last years offering. Graphics are nice and all (which has improved) but show me the gameplay and 2k has delivered! I love the new batting camera and how smooth the fielding is now. Infact everything is much smoother and funner to play. I'm looking forward to the full release.
I don't have the demo, I was wondering if someone has fiddled with the difensive swing. Is there variety in the hit or it's 100% foul ball? Thanks.
Depending on the hitter's attributes, using the defensive swing could result in either a foul ball, weak grounder, or even a strikeout. I was skeptical of the mechanic and thought it would be a cheap way to tire out the pitcher until you found a fat pitch to hit but I'm happy to say the mechanic is very well implemented from what I've briefly seen.
One more thing. The really big thing that is making me mad is the swings. If the batting is timing based only, then I want to put some wood on the bat if I time it correctly and it's in the zone. Too many times have I had good timing on a fastball down in the zone only to have my hitter swing no where near the ball. Overall, I'm really enjoying the demo just that one thing I don't like.
I don't have the demo, I was wondering if someone has fiddled with the difensive swing. Is there variety in the hit or it's 100% foul ball? Thanks.
Good variety. I fouled off several using it, hit a few weak dribblers, and even got a couple soft singles in the gaps. It's not an automatic contact either...I missed a couple trying to see what I could get away with. It's pretty well implemented it seems (for the user...hard to tell how it will play out over time for the AI).
WOW! I had no doubt that VC would make the necessary improvements to the game, but I can tell that they put in overtime here! Can't wait for the game's release. I'm not even looking forward to the start of the MLB season. I want this game first!
Honestly, it's an improvement but I don't think it's as drastic as many here have made it sound.
I do love the defensive swing idea though, that's long overdue. The camera while batting does seem to be a bit of an improvement from past years, but it's such a wide angle that I'm having difficulty timing the regular swing.
What I'm most unconvinced about remains fielding, which unsurprisingly has always been the number one thing I've disliked about the games in the past. The infield stuff seems to be better than I remember (though still not great), but it's the outfield play that I've never liked. In past versions, it always seemed like they tried to make camera angles like it looks on TV, at the expense of the gameplay. It's improved, yeah, but still not great. I had a weird camera angle when my SS was chasing a blooper into the outfield that started with him barely on the screen.
There's no way to cut-off a throw after it's thrown. The button it says to use for substitutions (down on the d-pad) doesn't work (so no pinch hitting, warming up pitchers, or subbing pitchers). The controller setup says up on d-pad for Inside Edge, when it's left and right. No pitch-out, which since I'm a Cardinals fan is extra annoying since Molina often tries to throw out the runner at first after a pitch-out (more often than most, I mean). I assume some of this should work in the full game, but not sure what.
But what continues to astound me the most, is that that they think a 3-inning demo is going to make people buy the game. There's only two teams in the game, and only the quick-play mode. Let us play a full 9-inning game to get an actual feel for how it plays. Nobody is going to play the demo over and over and over again if they like playing it. Limiting it to 3 only means that it barely tells anything about the game.
Oh, and I still HATE how A cycles through baserunners. Something as important as that needs direct control of the runner immediately.
And I like how the dirt changes over time, but the view of it from the fielding cameras has almost no texture to it, especially by the third inning.
Just had the computer make a dumb dumb mistake in the outfield. Jimmy Rollins hits a fly ball to left center, the left fielder is going for it and is only a few feet away from where he needs to be with the ball still in the air. Then the CF comes over, and the LF who is almost in position runs the other way and the ball drops in front of the CF.
Also, it does seem like the CPU is still swing happy. The first game I played they were actually taking pitches, but the more I played the more it seems they like to swing more. Only about 22 pitches thrown by me in my last game, that's including about 5 or 6 balls.
I'm impressed overall, but some of these issues are head scratchers.
But what continues to astound me the most, is that that they think a 3-inning demo is going to make people buy the game. There's only two teams in the game, and only the quick-play mode. Let us play a full 9-inning game to get an actual feel for how it plays. Nobody is going to play the demo over and over and over again if they like playing it.
Yeah, I've already played it over and over again and the three-inning demo convinced me to buy it.
Yeah, I've already played it over and over again and the three-inning demo convinced me to buy it.
What I meant was, nobody was going to play it over and over again if they like the game, in lieu of buying it. Sure, you can play the 3-inning game multiple times (and I have), but like I said, you don't get any sense of flow for the game if you can't play the middle and late innings.
Like as just one example of many, there's absolutely no way to see how stamina affects pitchers in the later innings of a game.
Keep it between only two teams, keep the only mode as quickplay, but really, to give a good impression (especially for a series that people have been iffy on for a while) you should at least give a 6 inning demo, preferably a full 9 inning game.
Positives:
- Lighting, player models, and graphics overall look slightly better
- Love game summary graphic at pause menu
- Fake ads are way better than 1,000 state farm and pepsi ads from last year
- Love the new presentation graphics. Pitch count, starting lineup, fielding lineup, entering batting box graphic, HR graphic. Wish it could be specific like ESPN or FSN, but it's unique in it's own respect
- Overall animations flow much better
- Inside edge is finally being used correctly this year. Hot/Cold
zones, hitting style (power/contact/defensive), pitching style, finally got it right after how many years?
- Love the batting view. This is debated here, but I love it. Makes it easier to read pitches IMO
- Swing analyzer! (MVP anyone?)
- Player specific chants are a nice touch. Heard at least two different A-rod ones
- I LOVE THE NEW STEAL CAMERA! Not only does it follow the baserunner, but there is a smaller camera showing the catcher in the bottom corner. What a great idea!
Negatives:
- Dirt textures on the field looks a little sloppy at times
- Still not sure about bat sounds
- Gonna take time to get used to the hitting, haven't even practiced check swinging yet
- Can't figure out the hit variety. I have complained about this since 2K6. It seems like a lot of the hits come off the bat too fast, and it makes the game play smaller. Seems like it's harder to score from second on a single, or stretch a double into a triple in this game. Anyone else see this? I'll look more into it
- Momentum physics on fielding in the infield are off. Players can be running one way, field the ball and stop and fire to first on a dime. The ball doesn't take them away to the base enough. Kinda hard to explain. Some of these animations, and the easy put out animations are a little awkward
???s:
- Won't know about commentary until game comes out. Was good last year, should be good again
- Sliders are my key concern. First game pinpointed pitches WAY too easy, (don't remember pitcher) second game was harder (Javier Vasquez). Hopefully sliders can create more foul balls, make it harder to pinpoint pitches, and do other things. We will see though...