"What the hell does this have to do with AFL Live?" I hear you scream. Well, IR Gurus is a small Australian developer who's been scooped up by Acclaim to make a series of AFL games. These guys are more than likely capable of great things, but hampered by businessmen wanting to make a quick buck out of a nice license such as the AFL. AFL Live 2003 was a decent first effort for these guys, but it was flawed in a few minor areas. Nonetheless, AFL Live 2003 was a success financially, so the suits decided to get IR Gurus to bust another AFL Live game out, just in time for this year's finals series. We admire IR Gurus effort for developing a game on what must have been a puny budget, but the result is less than favourable. In fact, AFL Live 2004 is quite possibly the worst sporting update. Ever.
An all new season
Everybody loves sports updates - or, what we like to call the process of "dropping a hundred bucks for a numeric increment and a few new features". Heck, at the time of writing, Madden NFL 2004 reportedly sold through 2 million units in just under 3 weeks in the US. AFL Live 2004 boasts an array of updates, such as an all new commentary team, new mini games, new animations, the Wizard cup pre-season competition, awards such as the Brownlow Medal, and much more.
Hip and shoulder
AFL Live 2003 was an average game - not too brilliant, but worth a look (we'd have given it a 6/10, if we were around at the time). As with all sports updates, AFL Live 2004 intended on fixing the errors of the preceding year, and adding a bunch of new features. We as human beings know that with life, not everything goes to plan, and AFL Live 2004 is a good example of this.
Various facets of AFL Live 2003 were taken back to the drawing board to be improved for this year's release, most notably the marking system, the animation, the kicking system and the control in general. Marking is now denoted by a small circle on the ground, as opposed to a HUD meter from last year's edition, making it almost impossible to see amongst the players vying for the ball. The timing on the marks is completely screwy, with players not jumping at a time which corresponds to your button press, missing the ball entirely, or having collision detection errors that should have been eliminated in the testing phase. The kicking system remains fairly similar to the previous game for the most part, except for the fact that the kick meter now appears on the screen in the middle of play, which can be distracting. A new snap kick has also been added for quick shots on goal. The overall control system of the game has been changed with various buttons now assigned to doing a completely different thing to what they did in last years release, which provided quite a few teething problems when trying to get into the game, so we advise that you read the manual before you play. The change in buttons is made even more painful by the fact that the control can be completely unresponsive at times.
According to various Acclaim PR spiels, AFL Live 2004 has "new and updated AI to make the game more realistic and challenging to play". The AI certainly is new, but its not the slightest bit realistic, and the challenge varies so much that you won't have any idea of which difficulty setting to play on. Our first game on the easy setting resulted in a 12.3 to 0.0 gap at quarter time before we decided to switch the game up to normal, where the gap was about 0.0 to 6.3 at the same point in time. This should highlight just how poorly balanced the "new and improved" AI is. AI isn't the only new side of the game that doesn't work - the ability to shuffle and make changes to your lineup doesn't actually work. You can sit around and tinker without your lineup until your heart is content, only to find out that everything you did was reset when you left the screen. It's enough to make you wonder if this product was tested at all.
If you do manage to scrape together some enjoyment from the buggy mess that is AFL Live 2004, there are plenty of options to prolong the fun (or pain, in our case). New additions include several training mini games, all of which seemed rather useless to us and the Wizard cup preseason competition, while old favourites such as the season and finals have returned. The season mode is a little more improved thanks to extra stat tracking and end of season awards. We're a little disappointed to see that there is no franchise mode or AFL draft available in the game, but we hope that will make the cut for the next game.
Stiff arm
The problems (and alleged improvements) of AFL Live 2004 don't stop with the gameplay. Last year's game copped a lot of flack over its visual presentation, and 2004 didn't do much to try and improve things. The ground is still too big, and the textures are still blurry. The crowd still has that lovely steamrolled appearance that has plagued sports games since their move into the third dimension. Player models look better, but only have a miniscule amount of detail, so minor things like hair colour will be able to help you distinguish the difference between Jason Akermanis and Nigel Lappin. The biggest gripe with the presentation in the game is the player animations. Normal animations are really stiff, and there is no buffer animation to help in the transition from say a sprint to a kick, which results in the players looking really stupid in the replays. Finally, to add insult to injury, AFL Live 2004 has frame rate problems, so you get to see all the poor animations in their horrible, stuttery glory.
AFL Live 2004 also includes the most disinterested commentary team in sports game history, as the two commentators and the boundary runner sound like they've been couped together to rattle off pre written lines for a videogame - wait a minute! On top of this, IR Gurus have used the age old method of piecing bits of commentary together, so you get a very segmented calling of the game. It'd be an idea if they considered using some of the capacity of the DVD, and getting their commentators to record lines based on games in action, rather than a script. We also believe that the crowd caught this bug from the commentary team that stops the conveyance of enthusiasm, as most games sound as if someone just died. Surely it can't be too hard to must together a bunch of people to yell wildly at a bunch of footballers, and then tape it for use in a videogame.
Finals Footy
It is apparent from every aspect of the game that IR Gurus was on strict instructions from Acclaim's suits to get AFL Live 2004 out in time for the AFL Finals, and it has resulted in more harm than good as you'd expect. Hopefully IR Gurus can get back on their feet, and try harder for next year's edition, but as it stands, AFL Live 2004 is the worst sports update we've played.
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