4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Let me know what you think about my reviews.
Tremo01

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby Tremo01 » April 30th, 2006, 11:34 am

Woah you were a wee bit harsh...

User avatar
VideoGameCritic
Site Admin
Posts: 18102
Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby VideoGameCritic » April 30th, 2006, 7:11 pm

[QUOTE=bluemonkey]

Zen maybe that's because those platforms were real easy to program for.  Complexity on code projects these days is infinitely more challenging and difficult.  There's a widely held belief that no class with more than 300 lines of code can ever be bug free.

[/QUOTE]

It's all relative.  Sure today's games are much larger in size and scope, but the developers have advanced APIs and software development tools at their disposal which add layers of abstraction and encapsulation.  And instead of a single programmer working on a game, you have a huge team, with groups of people working on every aspect (including quality assurance). 

In the case of MLB 2K6, it's probably not any developer's fault as much as it is the QA team.  They dropped the ball. 

bluemonkey1
Posts: 2444
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby bluemonkey1 » April 30th, 2006, 7:17 pm

But the incidental complexity grows to the level whereby no one understands everything and tons of errors creep in.  APIs can't help with that.  The growth of complexity with scale is larger than linear.  Tools can help to an extent.  But the incidental complexity of large projects is a problem that no tool can colve.  And larger teams just makes the problems worse.


User avatar
VideoGameCritic
Site Admin
Posts: 18102
Joined: April 1st, 2015, 7:23 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby VideoGameCritic » April 30th, 2006, 7:22 pm

[QUOTE=bluemonkey]

But the incidental complexity grows to the level whereby no one understands everything and tons of errors creep in.  APIs can't help with that.  The growth of complexity with scale is larger than linear.  Tools can help to an extent.  But the incidental complexity of large projects is a problem that no tool can colve.  And larger teams just makes the problems worse.

[/QUOTE]

Do you work on a software team?  I do, and your post makes no sense to me. 

By your logic, all modern games should be riddled with bugs.  In fact, the latest games for the PS2/GameCube/Xbox have all been extremely polished and reliable.  MLB 2K6 is basically a PS2 port, so stop trying to make excuses for them.  They screwed up and I'm just calling them on it.

Michael D

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby Michael D » April 30th, 2006, 8:39 pm

"...the latest games for the PS2/GameCube/Xbox have all been extremely polished and reliable."

Does that statement mean that you may review the current gen version of the game to state whether it has any merit without the bugs? I'm just wondering, since you only got to play a little bit of the 360 version and there may be something good in the game itself.  Kudos also to fingering the QA team, but you should probably also blame Microsoft, since they have a quality assurance policy that games need to meet before reaching the market (at least I think they do).


bluemonkey1
Posts: 2444
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby bluemonkey1 » May 1st, 2006, 1:39 pm

Well I haven't worked on a commercial software dev team.  My only experience is working for 2 months on a project with 7 other people and my dissertation this year which while not huge (probably around 10-12k lines of code) is still substantial for a single person, along with what I have been taught.

 

My point was that in the old days they dealt with simple code structure working at the low level with UML diagrams that any 1st year at uni could handle.  Whereas these days projects require hundreds of classes and dozens of modules.  The complexity comes from the interaction of all these parts and the interaction between staff.  The APIs take away the low level donkey work but don't help with the problems of interacting between all these different elements.  I mean in my project I have used very clear cut interfaces between the different stand alone modules and I still kept finding subtle bugs in their interaction.

 

There's a reason why the majority of all large pieces of software fail to even be shipped.  Bigger teams help in regards the volume of work but add in their own problems.

 

I never meant to make an excuse for them, I'm just saying you can't compare them to the simple games of the past.  I mean a lot of those old games are trivial to make.


playgeneration

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby playgeneration » May 1st, 2006, 3:58 pm

but back in the 8bit to 16bit days they were only given months, even weeks at times to make games, yet they managed to make them bug free. These days they have a year, or even several years to make a game, plenty of time to plan out and test things along the way. Sure the hardware and software is more complicated now, but as theres a lot more financial risk involved now youd think they wouldnt dare ship something unfinished.


bluemonkey1
Posts: 2444
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby bluemonkey1 » May 1st, 2006, 4:23 pm

You're right it makes far more sense to keep working on it, like Daikatana.

fatheadX1
Posts: 1
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby fatheadX1 » May 3rd, 2006, 11:54 am

I think what bothers me most is they secured the exclusive rights and then put out this unplayable piece of crap.  It's proving to be the worst-case scenario the anti-exclusive crowd (which was everyone, really) was talking about last year. 

 

I got back into console gaming a few years ago because I was sick of the pain you had to go through to get a PC game running correctly.  Now with downloads part of the console scene, I believe game companies are rushing console games out the door, knowing they can fix them later.  This is bad, very bad.  Ideally, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo will put their foot down and make it clear that this is unacceptable to the gamer community as a whole.  Games should be playable out the box, period.

 

If word gets out that MLB 2K6 is unworthy of purchase and most gamers do not buy a baseball game this year, I wonder how the licensing fees that go to MLB will compare to 2005?  I suspect that 2K Sports paid so much for the exclusive rights that MLB will still make much more than in years past.  I have to believe 2K Sports stands to lose some serious money on this deal if they cannot turn this franchise around quickly.


Koopa W.

4/28/2006: Xbox 360: Major League Baseball 2K6

Postby Koopa W. » May 3rd, 2006, 2:51 pm

I'm just going to buy MLB Slugfest 2006.

 

Matt



Return to “Review Feedback”