MVP NCAA BASEBALL 06
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Publisher : EA Sports | Developer : EA Canada | Released : |
 | Genre : BASEBALL |
Also visit : Game Profile | Your Review
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The first thing you notice is that in MVP '06 you are online all the time... as soon as the game turns on you're connected. This means that you can be in a game against the CPU, or you can be editing rosters in Dynasty Mode... and a buddy will sign onto the game and challenge you to a game. Right there you can check your Online e-mail / messages, approve the challenge, and you jump right into the game against your friend. No waiting, no logging in, no coordinating games.
Additionally with this is the use of the ESPN license. Live real sports feeds from ESPN Radio are pumped into the game, updated every 20 minutes. So every 20 minutes, you get ESPN Radio pumped automatically into the game, straight what you'd hear if you turned on your Satelite radio to ESPN ... or whatever you have. Me and Dan, from maddenplanet / MaddenNation were blown away by this ... And he's remarking how he'll never forget about where he learned that the White Sox traded for Javier Vasquez... we were in the middle of the game when an ESPN radio host tells us that the Sox traded for him. Same thing with me and Bill Meuller being signed by the Dodgers. Aside from the vocal ESPN radio, is the ESPN News Ticker at the bottom of every screen in the game ... this ticks the latest scores and sports news. It's fully filterable and you can click on the articles in the Online mode and read them -- straight from ESPN.com. These online features are identical for both PS2 and X-Box.
Dynamic Time
You can chose when you want your game to be played... 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM ... and the game REALISTICALLY changes time. Now, in years past with madden, you'd hit the 3rd quarter and all of a sudden it'd be dark ... Not anymore. As the game progresses, it actually moves in 20 minute intervals of time ... realistically becoming dark, not just like switching an on/off switch.
Dynamic Weather
Clouds can roll in, rain drops will fall, the game will be called or postponed ... It's pretty cool.
Wind now has more of an affect on the game than it did, as does light.
Quick Create
Before your game, you can hit one button and move into "Quick Create" mode ... where you can quickly make a ballpark in less than 1 minute, hit the Start button, and now you're playing in that park... no need to save or go through any more menus.
New Pitching Camera
New behind the pitcher view taken from that Japanese Konami baseball game ... or that game "influenced" this camera wink.gif It really looks great and plays well.
Pitching is now a lot harder to hit strikes. You actually walk guys and are fearful of missing the spots. It is much more difficult to get a perfect pitch. In the games I played, I'd get a few perfect pitches a game. You can also turn on an option, both or online and offline, for a "strikes only" game. For those guys who get pwned by the AI pitchers who throw low changeups all day, you can turn this on and it forces both you and the CPU AI to throw only strikes. This can also be used in unranked online games.
Load and Fire batting
This is a great addition and I wasn't sure of it, but I think that it's great after playing it. When the pitch is coming in, you pull back on the right analog stick. You DON'T want to pull back too much because you want one fluid motion... when the ball is coming over the plate you swing where the ball is or where you want to place it. This only really works on the X-Axis ... not the Y-Axis ... so you're working with left / right of the plate... not up / down of the zone. On top of this, two of the shoulder buttons let you do a "power swing" or "contact swing." The power swing gives you a boost in power (you throw all your weight into the swing--think David Ortiz) but you lose valuable time in the swing window of getting good contact. The contact swing is the opposite... you take like an Ichiro cut at it.... doesn't mean it';ll be a single, but that you'll make contact with the ball, or have a much higher chance of making contact to move runners.
Fielding
A new Hussle button was added... R2 I believe, or Right Trigger on X-Box. This will make the outfielder hussle for a few short seconds but then he'll get burned out right after. Key for cutting off a ball or making a catch that would have been out of reach, but like everything else, there is a risk / reward aspect to this. If you hussle your player will run out of energy quickly in the play and be chugging to get the ball if he misses it.
Another new aspect to fielding is that there are more intentional mis-reads and misplays on the ball by the CPU AI, which is heightened during away games. The computer no longer takes that perfect carem off the wall ... if it's a park they haven't played before, they might misplay a bounce off of a high left field wall which gives you an extra base.
Throwing in the Field has been COMPLETELy overhauled and redone and is now worked with the right analog stick. This is a complicated thing to explain but plays great. You point the stick at the base that you want to throw to... Right for first base, down for home, etc. Under the player is a sort of ... meter, but not really a meter. It's more like a cross hair and you want this crosshair to be Green. It's tough to explain, but plays great... I'll explain more tomorrow.
WHile College rules are supported and are defaults, all of the pro-rules are included as options. You can individually change each rule or just set the game to "summer" rules which loads up the MLB rules.
Gameplay
College ball is a game of small ball. One of the developers mentioned that every college team has at least one prerequesite for all of their players--THEY ALL HAVE TO BE ABLE TO BUNT. If you can't bunt, you won't make the cut. Bunting, contact, and moving runners has been emphasized this year... and this is reflect with how the computer plays. You see a lot more bunt singles or infield singles with speedy players. This isn't something rare, it happens a lot. Players steal on you, they move runners, double steals, and more. It's implemented very well. There are more errors in the game now... which reflects college play.
The BEST new thing implemented, in my opinion, that has been covered by just about NOBODY ... is a BRAND NEW CO-OP MODE
This is, hands down, bar none, the neatest little addition to the game that has gotten very little attention. You can play a coop game of baseball now, and it is handled very, very well. The first thing you will notice is the "hot switch" panel in the lower left. This panel is controlled by the select button or back button, and it switches up the function of the player on the field. Each player, player 1 or 2, controls a different aspect of the game... In the field, one player pitches while the other is the fielder, and at bat, one player bats while the other is the base runner. These roles can be switched at any time before the play by hitting the select / back button... and it seemlessly switches the role of the players. This adds a whole new level of teamplay to both regular player v. CPU games and online / player v. player games... especially on offense / at bat. The player on the bases needs to be in sync with the batter to perform a hit and run or a steal ... the batter has to know what's coming. This can be done with good communication, but also the controller responds based on what your teamate is doing. If I call a steal, as a base runner, and my teamate is at the plate, his controller will rumble just a bit ... telling him I'm stealing. So what does he want to do? Bunt? Contact swing? Try to take a big swing to mess up the catcher?
We played three games of this ... and it was some of the best baseball experience I've ever had.
IPB Image
That's me (blue shirt) and an MVP developer playing Josh (G4 and TIps and Tricks magazine) and Sean (Operation Sports) in a Coop online game. It ran flawlessly... and you'll notice in every picture almost all of us (except for sean......) are smiling... having an absolute blast.
Changes to online mode
No set limit for innings for ranked games, but this was ambiguous (I don't know if the developer got what I was asking). Ranked games are played on Varsity, they said, but I think this will change--I'm not sure though. You can play Online multiplayer coop. There are a lot of online trophies to win. No EA locker. Online gameplay has been revamped with the changes to pitching and fielding... no longer is every game a 2 hit game ... 1 - 0.. We had 12, 13, 14, 15 hits in our online games... which is accurate for College baseball.
There's now also a tournament mode added... reflects the college tournament.
I'll talk about Dynasty tomorrow, though I didn't get into the Dynasty mode that much. I played it and checked it out, and it is very indepth ... as well as a lot of cool new features ("challenges" -- I'll get into that later) and entirely authentic merchandise (authentic bats, cleets, unis, balls, gloves, everything) that actually have an effect on how your players play on the field... In season recruiting and a new recruiting challenge (top 25 recruits will come to check out the school and you need to impress them... so they'll offer you a challenge "Beat USC 2 / 3 games while I'm visiting the school..." if you do that, he's a lock to go there... if you don't, you lose him).
Bottom line is that this game was remade from the ground up. The engine is mostly the same, but the new batting, fielding, gameplay, dynasty, online, the ESPN stuff ... these are huge steps. On top of having to redoe the stadiums and the teams... and then including all of this stuff, MVP '06 is a huge step forwards. We were all talking afterwards about how there will be a lot of people who won't get the game simply because it's a College baseball game... Well ... understandable, people want to play as the guys they know... but this game is an EXCELLENT baseball game... Simply fantastic. They've still got a month to work out some of the kinks--we had some visual glitches and the PS2 version, on the LCD / HDTV looked bad, but the game is looking great so far and at this point I'd say it's the best baseball game I've ever played. However, that's only after 6 or so hours of gameplay... that's just my first reaction. The Coop mode makes it worth while to purchase alone, but there's a lot in here that is just excellent and totally innovative.
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