Take-Two to put out an additional baseball game

sportdan30 · Post by **sportdan30** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:51 pm

Nice to see that Take-Two is so confident that they put out such a stellar title in 2K6 that they can devote more time to a slightly more arcadish title. Does anyone have any faith that 2K7 will be any better than last year's garbage of a game?

p.s. Check out the last paragraph of the article.

http://sports.ign.com/articles/726/726509p1.html

PAL_Gamer · Post by **PAL_Gamer** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:59 pm

What they should do is make a manager-type game like EA did with NFL Head Coach. Sports gaming with all this exclusive license sh*t is going down the loo!

PAL

billharris44 · Post by **billharris44** » Fri Aug 25, 2006 10:02 pm

That's pretty funny. They couldn't even get their primary baseball game past alpha last year before they released it, and they want to make an extra one.

hellbent · Post by **hellbent** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:19 am

No offense to anyone who actually liked the 2k offerings the past two years, but that series has been a steaming pile of crap ever since they parted ways with FatPitcher's dev group (Blue Shift, I think?).

2k5 and 2k6 have trotted out some nice gameplay IDEAS here and there that were just not implemented well. Even if they had gotten some of these new features working well, the bugs alone the past two years have been mind-boggling, especially the passed ball debacle in 2k5. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - ESPN Baseball 2k4 was a great baseball game, and just needed continual, gradual improvement, not a complete overhaul.

Well, at least HomeRun King was a fun Sega arcade game back in the day, maybe this new title they've announced will capture that kind of play with a little luck.

Sully · Post by **Sully** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:06 pm

I think now is the perfect time for Microsoft to make another attempt at a baseball title.

bkrich83 · Post by **bkrich83** » Sat Aug 26, 2006 12:20 pm

hellbent wrote:

No offense to anyone who actually liked the 2k offerings the past two years, but that series has been a steaming pile of crap ever since they parted ways with FatPitcher's dev group (Blue Shift, I think?).

2k5 and 2k6 have trotted out some nice gameplay IDEAS here and there that were just not implemented well. Even if they had gotten some of these new features working well, the bugs alone the past two years have been mind-boggling, especially the passed ball debacle in 2k5. If it ain't broke, don't fix it - ESPN Baseball 2k4 was a great baseball game, and just needed continual, gradual improvement, not a complete overhaul.

Well, at least HomeRun King was a fun Sega arcade game back in the day, maybe this new title they've announced will capture that kind of play with a little luck.

I enjoyed Home Run Kings far more than any of the 2k baseball games. I know lots of people liked 2k4, but I just couldn't get in to that game.

I'd love to see a return of HRK, or at least a close facsimile of it.

brendanrfoley · Post by **brendanrfoley** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 12:40 am

Sully wrote:I think now is the perfect time for Microsoft to make another attempt at a baseball title.

MS is still sitting on top of the old high Heat code.

All they have to do is slap on a new coat of paint, and they'd have a game far better than TakeTwo's offering.

FatPitcher · Post by **FatPitcher** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:16 am

brendanrfoley wrote:
Sully wrote:I think now is the perfect time for Microsoft to make another attempt at a baseball title.
MS is still sitting on top of the old high Heat code.

All they have to do is slap on a new coat of paint, and they'd have a game far better than TakeTwo's offering.

The code is probably worthless at this point. Everything in the game is so dependent on animations, how they transition from one to the next, how long they take, etc. When you put in new animations, the (running and fielding) AI will be useless. The canned hitting system and goofy pitch physics would also have to be redone for the game to have wide appeal, and the franchise stuff was a big mess. Network and interface code would need to be re-written. I don't think anything but maybe part of the pitching AI would be salvageable.

ESPN 2k4, in my opinion, needed to overhaul presentation and animations (two of the main things I pushed for), but the producer and the executive producer knew better, and the game was a resounding success behind the strength of the demo, first person baseball, and online play.

Gurantsu · Post by **Gurantsu** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 8:02 am

2K5 was actually my favorite baseball game that year (after slider settings of course), and still gets the most play from me out of all of my baseball goames (and I still have 6 of them in the rotation!)

2K6 was the only basball game I ever got rid of without selling the system!