GameSpot's Sports Gaming Blog

  • A Few Thoughts on Tiger Woods 12

    With the latest installment in the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series due out for release at the end of the month, I've been spending some time with a complete, pressed-for-retail version of the game to see how it has all come together. We'll reserve final judgment for the review, which the team will have coming your way in a few weeks. But in the meantime, here are a few thoughts and impressions based on the first few hours of Tiger 12's career mode.

    1. The Masters is everywhere

    If you weren't aware that the Masters is in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12, you'll be reminded of it the moment the game loads up. The entire interface has been reworked to focus on this year's big new feature. Menus sit atop images of Augusta National cycling in the background, while the entire interface is done up in soothing shades of green and gold to match the color scheme of golf's biggest event. It's an odd change if you're like me and you've spent a not-insignificant portion of your life growing more and more accustomed to the loud, snazzy menus that EA Sports games tend to offer. But it's a welcome change--a subtle and understated interface that works well with one of the more laid-back professional sports.

    Another nice feature of the menus is the way the screen is split down the middle with advanced options on the left and one-button navigation on the right. The left side is where you can dig through all the menus in search of the standard customization options, career statistics, and options screens. But on the right side of the screen is a window that offers a suggested next step at every turn, letting you get started with the next major event with a single button press or taking you straight to the new gear you've unlocked when you've ranked up with a sponsor. For those intimidated by the often esoteric menus in sports games, it's a nice little touch.

    2. The caddie system is a great addition, but it still needs some work

    New this year is a caddie system to offer you advice and options on the next shot. For everyone who's not a diehard golfer, it's a great way of removing some of the biggest obstacles in golf. You don't need to know which club will work best in a given situation or whether a certain shot is risky or just plain stupid. You simply choose from a pair of suggested shots and focus on hitting the ball.

    For the most part, the caddie AI works very well. I've been able to easily coast through entire events without the slightest bit of worry over which club to use or how to approach the green. But there have been a handful of times when the caddie has been completely out to lunch with his suggestions. At times I've hit his suggested shot with the correct angle and the right amount of power, but the ball has still found its way into the water or a sand trap. It's rarer for the caddie to goof up on the green, but it has happened, like the one time he suggested a putting target about 10 yards to the right of the hole even though I was standing a few short feet from the hole, with hardly any angle on the green.

    After these goof-ups, the trust level I place in my caddie has been somewhat strained. Now I have to take what he suggests with a grain of salt when there are potential hazards nearby and try to exercise extra common sense when a suggested putting target seems a little off. It's tempting to fall into the habit of accepting your caddie's suggested shot every single time, but if you do this without a healthy sense of skepticism, then chances are you'll get burned at least once every couple of events. I still really enjoy the caddie system, but it's clear that EA isn't quite done fine-tuning it. In fairness, you can level up your caddie's familiarity with certain courses, but some of the gaffes we experienced were simply too glaring to suggest anything other than an AI shortcoming.

    3. The career mode makes you work for it, but not too hard

    The game's career mode has been rebranded as Road to the Masters and has you starting off in amateur tournaments before getting even a whiff of your PGA Tour card. There's a nice sense of progression to the way all of this plays out, letting you feel like you're actually building up to something before you finally go professional. But in a nice little touch, EA has made it so that standout players don't need to grind through the amateur levels if they've already got the skills. For example, I was able to quickly graduate from semi-professional Nationwide Tour by winning two events, saving me a bunch of time over the other graduation criteria, such as coming in the top 10 over a much longer stretch of events. Combine that with gear sponsorships that you can level up over time, and you've got a career mode that does the carrot-on-a-stick system really well.

    4. The create-a-player feature is terrific

    I mean, just look at this guy:

    Amazing. Stay tuned for the full review later this month, including impressions of what it's like once you finally do reach the Masters.

  • Moto GP 10/11 Updated Hands-On Preview

    If there were ever a sim racing game just dying to give you a hug, Moto GP 10/11 is it. The series has long been known as a destination for hardcore motorcycle enthusiasts, with its no-frills presentation and straightforward driving model. Sure, there has always been a bit of spectacle in those gaudy leathers and helmets, as well as the constant possibility of witnessing an assuredly awesome 10-bike pileup in the rain, but the racing itself has always been pretty geared toward, well, gearheads. Moto GP 10/11 can still be that game…but it doesn't have to be. It's the first game in the series to offer a suite of purely optional driving assists for you to tweak and fine-tune the experience to suit your own personal racing competence. After getting my first taste back in January of how these assists affect the experience, Capcom was kind enough to send us over an updated build so we could spend a little more time with the newly hug-friendly Moto GP.

    Having got a pretty good idea of how the various assists can have an impact on the experience in my last look at Moto GP 10/11, I decided to jump headfirst into career mode to see what sort of progression the game offers. The first thing I did was create a new racing team called "McShea Bikes" after GameSpot's resident motorcycle legend Tom McShea. (OK, so Tom doesn't really know anything about motorsports, but I did once sign him up for Truckin' magazine as a prank.) Next up, I created custom team branding with a sweet neon green and pink color scheme on both our racing leathers and bike liveries. Needless to say, the look of McShea Bikes has been a hit in the office.

    With my team fully established, it was time to start racing. I went with the default medium assist level, which enables aids such as traction control, anti-wheelie, and auto weight transfer so you need only steer into corners rather than shift your weight around as well. Assists that are left disabled on medium, however, include auto-braking and auto-tucking for when you're gunning it on the straights. I'm by no means a motorcycle racing expert, but I was able to do pretty well with this difficulty level. I finished seventh in my first race in the Grand Prix of Qatar and then went on to nab first in my second race at Gran Premio de Espana.

    Feeling confident in my results, I decided to disable a few of the assists such as anti-wheelie and auto weight transfer. Naturally, this led to a much tougher racing experience, and I spent an awful lot more time tumbling on the ground than atop the first-place podium. Fortunately, Moto GP 10/11 preserves the rewind button new to last year's game. You can use it as much as you want, on the lower difficulty levels, though bumping the difficulty up will disable the rewind button entirely.

    After settling into the groove of racing without those initial assists turned on, I went back to racking up top-level finishes and managed to acquire a pretty decent amount of cash. Like in last year's Moto GP, you can use accrued money to fill out your team staff, including hiring PR managers. After a while, you can also nab sponsors who will pay you bonuses based on how you finish.

    Another feature I tried out was the local split-screen co-op racing. The name itself is a bit misleading, as it's actually two different people on two different bikes. Essentially, you can have a second player join you at any time during the career mode events. The player will be outfitted in your team colors, and any earnings he or she pulls in go toward your team's overall cash pool. It's a neat little feature that helps to occasionally alleviate the loneliness of playing a long, drawn-out offline career mode--and you can also team up surprisingly well.

    That about does it for our experience with the Moto GP 10/11 career mode. If you're eager for more, you can expect to see our review arrive around the time of the game's release on March 15. Stay tuned!

  • Fight Night Champion - Your Questions Answered

    A couple of weeks ago, we, your humble GameSpot editors, put the word out that we had just gotten a copy of Fight Night Champion and were on the lookout for some questions from our readers. Well, after a short delay (sorry for the wait!), we’re here to answer some of the most interesting questions you guys sent our way. The questions ranged from nitty-gritty control details to someone pondering how Chuck Norris would do if he played the game--he’s really more of a MySims Sky Heroes guy to tell you the truth. We’ll do our best to give you a good idea of what’s in store without spoiling the upcoming review. On to the answers!

    chriswolves1 asks: Are you able to "chase down" your opponent? In the previous game when you hurt someone, all they had to do was keep backing away till they recovered, and if your guy was slower, you couldn't catch up to them. Is there an ability to almost run, or speed up to get to cut off the ring?

    Giancarlo says: There are a couple things that happen when opponents are on the verge of being knocked out. In some cases, they'll actually be dazed, which not only makes it difficult for them to move, but it also makes it easier to close in and deliver the knockout. We have run into a few instances where they've been able to back off and avoid the knockout, but it seems like AI opponents aren't afraid to go for the clinch and wait it out that way.

    khaspe asks Will you be able to feint punches and punch in the clinch?

    Giancarlo says: You can't feint punches and you can't punch in the clinch. This iteration of Fight Night really seems to encourage fighting smart and making sure that each punch you make is deliberate and not a result of mashing buttons. If you do start mashing, your boxer's just going to start flailing away, leaving him open to counterattacks. It also pays to change things up, so while you can't feint punches, you can certainly try to confuse your opponent with different strategies.

    kornkid606 asks: Have they added anything to the single-player career mode to make it feel like more than just a stat grind?

    Shaun says: EA isn’t letting us get into all the details of the new Champion mode, but suffice it to say that it’s a much different sort of career mode from what you’ve seen in previous Fight Nights. It’s a much more cinematic take on the rise of a boxer, complete with cutscenes and a story penned by the dude who wrote Monster’s Ball (no word yet on whether Billy Bob Thornton makes a cameo).

    jjjrrr11211 asks: Can I make the character look like me down to the tee?

    Giancarlo says: In the Legacy mode, you can either edit a preexisting boxer in the lineup or you can create your own. If you want to create a Fight Night doppelganger, then you can use the Xbox Vision camera or download a photo to put your own face in the game. If that's not really an option, then you can use a series of template heads and change things like hairstyle, facial hair, side burns--the usual stuff. However, there aren't any sort of sliders or other options to change the finer details.

    SPuDl asks: Can we still low blow?

    Giancarlo says: You certainly can. If you use it too many times over the course of a match, you'll get disqualified.

    mrfahrenheit94 asks: What kinds of improvements are there from FNR4 in terms of physics and animations?

    Shaun says: The first thing you’ll notice about Fight Night Champion is that this game looks downright pretty. The character models are more detailed, the lighting more realistic, and the whole thing just looks a lot slicker. In terms of physics, there are things like more realistic muscle and fat effects, like the way your characters cheeks ripple on a slow-mo replay of him getting totally knocked out. As for animations, we didn’t really notice any drastic upgrades like we did with the character models.

    mysterious_13 asks: Will the control button scheme to use button pushes instead of analog stick movement for punching be included at the time of launch--not in a later patch?

    Giancarlo says: Yes. It will be available right out of the gate. Button punching is nice if you want more precision out of your punches, but I actually found myself going back and forth between the two during various fights. I found that using the second analog stick for some combinations feels a little more natural.

    invert48 asks: Did they fix the problem that no matter how late in the fight or how little health you have left if you get knocked down only once you will be able to get up almost instantly? Also, are the flash knockdowns completely random like last time or are they actually based on how hard the punch was thrown?

    Giancarlo says: From what I've seen so far, if your stamina is still pretty high, you won't have a problem getting up after the first knockdown. But if you get knocked down in a late round or a second and third time in separate rounds, it becomes much harder to get back up quickly. As for flash knockdowns--the ones I've seen require a pretty clean, strong punch, but they still seem pretty random. Still, you probably won't knock anyone out with a random jab.

    Master_I asks: Is EA going to continue its "online activation" (needing to type a code to play online and buy a code if it's a preown) on this title, and continue it with others?

    Shaun says: It looks like it. When we first booted up the game, we were prompted to enter our Online Pass code to access what the game calls “premium online features.”

    trifecta2k asks: Do fights actually last long? Does the new stamina stuff actually play a factor? In the last game, I rarely made it past round 4. I don't think I ever saw a decision.

    Giancarlo says: Many of the fights I've played in the Legacy mode have gone the full number of rounds to a decision, and even some of the exhibition matches with well-known boxers have gone well beyond the fourth round.

    multiplat asks: Is this Kinect or Move enabled?

    Giancarlo says: Nope.

    Pauly28 asks: Will there be purses in career mode? Maybe use that money towards training, corner men, intros, clothing, etc.

    Shaun says: Yep! There will be purses in Legacy mode. We didn’t get far enough to get a good sense of all the different uses for money in the career mode, but EA is hinting at some “out of plan expenses” that you might not normally predict. We’ll see what that means!

    Rabz3174 asks: In career mode, are the training simulations worth doing this time around or are they impossible just like FN4? I actually want to build my fighters stats up rather than always simulating because they're so damn hard.

    Giancarlo says: In the brief amount of time I've spent with the Legacy mode, I haven't had any trouble with most of the minigames. There were a few moments where it wasn't expressly clear what exactly I was doing wrong, but that seemed to fade after a few minutes.

GameSpot Most Popular Sports Games

Rankings based on user activity from yesterday, limited to upcoming games and games released in the last year.

  1. Today's #1 Game Top Spin 4Editor's Choice:
    Top Spin 4 Thumbnail
  2. 2. Top Spin 4
  3. 3. Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
  4. 4. NBA 2K11
  5. 5. MLB 11: The Show
  6. 6. Fight Night Champion
  7. 7. NBA 2K11
  8. 8. Major League Baseball 2K11
  9. 9. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters
  10. 10. Top Spin 4