This past week the game I have been playing the most...well that's probably War of the Ring. Gandalf (the Grey) died taking The Fellowship to The Woodland Realm, Saruman emerged in Isengard and attacked Rohan and Gondor is still inactive and refusing to take up arms. So Boromir leaves The Fellowship in an attempt to rally his people because Mordor has mobilized and Saruman keeps breeding Uru-Kai.If the above paragraph makes ANY sense at all to you, you should find copy of this board game. (Picture taken from Board Game Geek)
The videogame I have been playing is College Hoops 2K8 on the 360. (Offline). I won't go over everything here but my general take is:It's a good game with some nice additions but I just don't know if this is $60 better than 2K7. If you are like Todd and skipped 2K7 then this is a no-brainer. But you are also going to need some slider tweaks to get it to play better out of the box because on default settings your team defense will drive you insane. Defenders sag way too much and are painfully slow to rotate and play effective zone defense.
Some slider tweaks to consider:
--First grab the OS Community Rosters off of 2K Share. Man..what a GREAT new feature.
--Game Speed 55.
--Real FT% shooting ON (FTs are too easy or too hard IMO)
--Lower CPU shooting range a bit. I think I am at 48/48/46 (46 being 3 pt shooting). I am currently coaching my way up the ranks and starting at Texas State and usually teams shoot about 40% against me.
--CPU Drive Tendency to 70 (you WILL foul..)
--Team Unity to 0 (I hate this feature), YMMV.
--Human and CPU Layup Success to 55 or 60
--Lower Human shooting (mid range and close) to 48. I keep 3pt at 50.
--Raise Def. AWR for both CPU and Human to around 70.
--CPU Off. Rebounding to 40
--CPU Steals to 60, Human to 55
--Human /CPU Block Shots to 15 (way too many blocked 3 pt shots in this game)
--The foul sliders, aside from shooting fouls, don't do a damn thing. The CPU NEVER commits a foul that is not a shooting foul, so tweak these at your own discretion. I have shooting fouls at 60.
--Ball Handling to around 35 or 40 for both CPU/Human. There remains a lack of turnovers in this game, just like last year.
That's where I am now and I'm getting solid games. Oh, and I'm playing on AC lvl right now. That might change soon though.
I don't know if it's my age, lack of time or what -- but these recruiting models are starting to drain the fun out of the college games for me. I remember back when you did recruiting off season in games like NCAA 04...it was fairly quick, easy, and was deep enough to make it a cool mini game but now recruiting is a 7 day a week JOB in these games. In 2K8 they added the ABL (the summer AAU circuit) so you can spend even more time watching and playing with high school prospects. Who has time for this?
I spent, literally, 2 hours doing a month of recruiting a few nights ago when I finally stopped and started to let the AI handle some of it. I am as hardcore as any sports gamer on the planet, but good lord people --- when you replace quick and easy fun with busy work -- that's not good. I know real coaches recruit 24/7/365 but why do we need to do that in the game? I want recruiting to be fun, somewhat fast, and deep enough to make me think when I'm doing it. I'm sick of the "game in a game" thing. Maybe it's just me.Anyway. It's a fun game. Not revolutionary. But worth playing.
But with CH2K8 now out...what is the sports game of 2007?
Todd?
NHL 08? NHL 2K8? NBA 2K8? Out of the Park? They're all sort of warty if you ask me.
Can we call BioShock a sports game?
