2007 has been quite a year for gaming as has been pointed out many times during this issue of Rodent and certainly in the Sports genre that’s also the case. Here then is a brief run down of the highs and lows of our Rodent Sporting Year. Oh and this is devoid of any US centric sports because although we like US Sport we have neither the time nor money to investigate all the EA Franchises. Let’s just assume they were like last years, but with slightly different graphics and up to date teams/players and leave it at that.

Tennis

Roger Federer has just lost a match in the Australian open and it wasn’t even in the final! He is the big cheese in Men’s Tennis though and yet in 2007 I never had a problem beating him in Virtua Tennis 3. No, my problem foe was big serving US journeyman Taylor Dent. For some reason gaining the World No 1 rating in World Tour meant winning against this guy on a boat. It’s funny how great this game is and yet how funny things like this get thrown up. In the end I got the better of him by shutting down my 360 after losing so I could just keep playing that Season ending tournament over and over again till I figured it out. Just for the record I nearly broke a Dreamcast controller playing VT2 after my 1 millionth loss to Carlos Moya, but at least he’s won a Grand Slam event.

Cricket

With a summer like we had in the UK it's surprising that any Cricket got played at all. Rain, rain and more rain don’t make for a happy Cricketer. Of course the opposite of that should have been the many hours gamers got to sit inside and play other like minded souls using the wonders of online gaming and the latest Codemasters incarnation of Brian Lara. It was sadly, not that easy.

For starters it would simply freeze for no reason, sure it added to the tension of a close game but it’s hardly an ideal way of settling the result. Then of course there was the run-making, 30 runs one over after another, and then for no reason whatsoever you couldn’t get any. Add in the pesky Wicket Keepers who just didn’t want the bails to stay on the wickets and you’re starting to see the word fun being taken outside for a beating. Want to catch a ball? Forget it. Want to throw a ball roughly to the crease from the outfield? Fat chance. Cricket isn’t meant to be a violent game but the rage built up inside many could reach Hulk sized proportions.

Then one day Codemasters fixed the freezing problem so at least it was playable, and everyone was happy right? Dunno because no one cared anymore. Better luck next time lads.

Motorsport

It was a bit of a bumper year for racers and no mistake. Early in the year saw the arcade madness that was Excite Truck for the Wii, which was a pretty mental and bouncy ride to say the least. In a similar vein, or rather terrain, there was the PS3 monster Motorstorm, brown canyon vistas, dynamic mud and manic Multiplayer action. Both of these though were rather overshadowed by the 360s big deluge of quality car based entertainment products.

Forza2 : Finally a Console racer than eclipsed anything with Gran Turismo in the title. Stunningly smooth at 60fps, it may not have looked that ‘Next Gen’ but it was so smooth and fluid to the players input that none of that mattered. The Online modes only added to the experience, buying, selling, gifting cars to others, a paint shop that for the first time let you run a BMW with a large cock painted on it, the obligatory LIVE Leaderboards (pity about the blanking after a few months). Here at planet Rodent it has probably eaten the most Online gaming hours of any game this year, banter and hi-jinks abound.

DiRT : Strangely enough, not one for the purists. A return to form for the Colin McRae series, with one of the most beautifully rounded arcade racers we've ever seen - it was only the absence of an equally rounded online experience that let the side down.

PGR4 : The cousin of Forza2 in many ways. Chuck out Circuit racing in favour of major metropolitan areas and lessen the need to have a degree in Engineering to drive the cars. Drop 30frames a second but add some of the best Weather effects ever to grace the genre and what you have an immersive tour de force. Not perhaps the driving sim of Forza, but the look and feel of driving a Ferrari Enzo in a deluge of rain (see UK weather reference from the Cricket section) at 200mph across the Brooklyn bridge, whilst fighting off 7 other high performace supercars. It’s simply grintastic.

Flatout : Speaking of Degrees, for this one you’ll need something in the Physics field. Whether it’d help you avoid all the road furniture that clutters up the race track is another matter. Perhaps slightly frustrating as a single player game where the sheer craziness of these Physics can frustrate more than entertain, it comes into its own in Multiplayer where its just sheer carnage for everyone involved. As different from Forza2 and PGR4 as you can get and yet still a racer at heart. Don’t expect to ever see this sort of thing on the Telly of a wet Sunday afternoon though.

Sega Rally : A huge Arcade behemoth from the past rears into the Console Realm again. It should have been utterly fantastic and perhaps as a laugh with your mates after a pub session it was, but somehow it missed the boat. Partly it was swamped by the other titles mentioned but also it had been messed with and wasn’t really Sega Rally as we all knew it. No more point to point racing, less you versus the clock and more you vs CPU controlled wonder-drivers. To say this thing seemed hard was no flippant statement. At 20quid it’d have been good value but at full price it was a bit limited.

Football - The Big Boys

The year the worm turned it would appear. Even since the Pro Evo games landed on these shores it had been pretty common thinking that for your hardcore thinking man's football game Pro Evo / PES was the thing so be seen out with. The previous years FIFA showed that the gap was not so small that either game had it’s good and bad points. But for 2007 perhaps it was time for it to claim the crown. It’s never been disputed than FIFA sold more, that’s just the might of EA but now it could for most claim to be the better of the 2 giants. Konami appear to be treading water, and seem content with year-on-year updates that really don’t warrant the outlay of another 50quid from their ardent supporters. And with PES2008 it may well have gone all out Arcade, with a Sprint feature which seems almost unworldly. FIFA however has gone the other way and requires the player to play with his brain and prod, poke and positions the opponent into errors and silly tactical descisions

Football - The return of the Prodigal Son

The fervour upon of the announcement of SWOS coming to XBLA was striking. Heated debates on Internet forums about why this would be great, why it would be awful and all things in between meant that when the rather messy birth of it in late December occurred I’d imagine Codemasters where glad to see the back of it. The conversion it has to be said is lovely. The updated graphics are the first I’ve seen that appear to work. The lack of real players names does take away a tad though and trying wrestle a 360 pad to do the thing justice ain’t perfect. But for a simple to pickup footie game you cannot really complain. People are though and if it had been a full price release you’d have good reason but for 800 points and a wave of 90's nostalgia it shows that classic games can still be fun.

February 2008

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