The Show vs other Ultimate Team games (long read)
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After spending countless covid hours beefing up my ultimate teams in NBA, NHL, NFL and FIFA, I finally got to take a crack at The Show for the first time this year. I knew of its reputation as a "better alternative" to the other team games, so I was anxious to see how it stacks up.
Here's what I liked and disliked about each.
NHL 21 - Hockey Ultimate Team (The Ebenezer Scrooge of ultimate team games)
CON: Check out this shiny new Connor McDavid... 97 OVR. Pretty sweet, huh? Want it? Ok, here's all you have to do. Trade your 96 OVR Connor McDavid which I assume you somehow already have, plus a dozen Gold Collectables worth a cool mil, plus 24 Monthly Collectibles and 24 Gold players. Throw it all in the blender and out pops a marginally better card than what you just threw away. I've learned to ignore their promotions and take extra satisfaction when I catch McDavid napping and nearly smash him through the boards with Zdeno Chara.
PRO: Player Synergies. Each player has attribute bonuses based on their real-world skills (shooting, skating, defense, etc). Adding a certain number of players with matching bonuses activates the skills for all players. It's basic stuff, but adds another layer of strategy for building a lineup.
CON: If you were making a checklist of "must have" auction house features, what would you include? Well, if you had half a brain, probably a way to search for a particular player by name. How about an easy way to know if you've been outbid, won or lost an auction? A way to sort your search results? Simple stuff. Yet NHL 21 does none of those things. It makes the AH a nauseating mess and I've been legit angry more than once to discover that I actually lost an auction that I thought I had won. But clearly the goal is to make you buy pack$ from the store anyway. Speaking of...
CON: The pack$. At least they give you the card odds up front so that you know exactly how unlucky you're about to be. After a couple months of playing (no money spent), I managed to cobble together a team in the high 80s, low 90s OVR- so decent, but nothing special. The odds of me finding anything even remotely of value in any of the packs is in the single digits and they cost as much as $15 each. Every time I get even remotely tempted to buy something from the shop, I watch some dope on YouTube do it for me and end up with vicarious buyer's remorse.
PRO: All of that said, few sports translate to the digital format as well as hockey. A lot of people complain that they're paying for a yearly roster update, but EA doesn't need to constantly reinvent the wheel. It's a solid and fun experience. I would proably skip the ultimate team format completely and just stick to franchise, but it's the only way to play legacy players like Lemieux, Lindros, Lefleur and other greats whose last name starts with L or other letters.
NBA 2K21 - MyTeam
CON: COOL! I got a 91 OVR card! Oh, wait- it's a Sapphire and I want a Pink Diamond or maybe a Galaxy Opal. It sounds like I'm picking through a soggy bowl of Lucky Charms and I don't know what any of this confusion means in real-world terms. So the 91 Lebron card that I got so excited about is actually trash? Probably.
PRO: The games themselves are a lot of fun, although I quickly learn that my understanding of play calling and strategy is lacking. Can't blame the game for that. In terms of presentation, NBA also looks closest to an actual televsion broadcast.
CON: The tutorials aren't the best, consisting of a pop-up message showing the controls for each lesson. It's not as interactive as the other games and I struggle to stay focused through dozens of seemingly similar hesitations and feints with complicated button combinations. Some extra XP or a trash pack upon completion would have made the lessons go down a little easier.
CON: Again with the player contracts that you have to keep applying to your starters every few games. Still not a fun game mechanic and it feels like the only reason it's here is for the 2K accountants to shake a few more coconuts out of the tree.
PRO: Locker Codes. Again, this isn't a reinvention of the wheel. But there's something undeniably satisfying about finding a random code online, plugging it in, and getting a giant Plinko board minigame with the chance to win decent to good rewards.
Madden 21 - Madden Ultimate Team
PRO: I have this game on pc as well as console and managed to easily put together 90+ OVR teams in both versions with no money spent. By linking your EA account to Amazon, a baby angel dies, but you do also get some worthwhile monthly freebies. Actual quality players and difference makers.
PRO/CON: Challenges. The pro is that they're usually easy to complete, even on the hardest difficulty. That makes it easy to quickly rack up xp and cash. The con is that they're also typically boring and you'll spend more time in load screens than on the field.
CON: Face of The Franchise aka Bro Mode. Relive the triumphs and tragedies of bros just trying to make their way on this big, blue marble we call home. Will your bro be a big meanie? Or will he be slightly less of a meanie? You decide, since you made him look like yourself anyway! It's all the tension of a Hallmark made-for-tv movie with the added enthusiasm of a loudmouthed espn anchor providing narration.
FIFA 21 - Ultimate Team
NEUTRAL: As an American mainly consumed with American sports, soccer has always been a bit off my radar. I don't understand the rules, I don't know the positions, players or clubs. All that I'm bringing to the table here is a love of sports and video games, and I'm hoping that's enough to get me up to speed quickly. It's not. 30 matches in, I still don't understand offsides. I can't figure out the difference between a club and a team, or why there is a distinction. And I have no strategy beyond kick ball in net. This obviously isn't a fault of the game so much as a disclaimer about my own (lack of) abilities and understanding of the sport.
PRO: Despite this, the game does do a good job of acclimating you with a ton of interactive tutorials. The game difficulty can also be mercifully scaled down to remedial levels (presumably also up), where a single button handles everything from passing, shooting and tackling. This was especially helpful for me in the beginning when I was just trying to understand the rules.
PRO: The street 3v3 mode (Volta) is a lot of fun for a strategy deficient player, and has an interesting gameplay loop where you add a player to your squad from each team that you defeat. Then you use your winnings to clothe them in whichever branded virtual goods are for sale that make them look the least silly. Or most silly, I don't judge.
CON: My best player's contract has expired and can't play in any more games until I unlock a Contract Pack and apply it to the card. Why is this a fun game mechanic? Can anyone tell me? In theory it might force you to cycle through your lineup more than usual and pull some of those jabronis off the bench. But I found that I had so many extra contracts in my inventory, it was mostly just a nuisance to keep applying them to my starters over and over.
The Show 21 - Diamond Dynasty
PRO: Progression. What I've been enjoying most about the Show is the feeling that whatever I'm doing, I'm making progress toward something. And that something could actually be numerous things simultaneously. It's a great feeling if you're primarily an achiever on the Bartle chart.
CON: Server Issues. Well, duh. This is likely only a temporary problem, I would hope and imagine. But still an annoying one, especially if it comes at the expense of lost xp or completed goals and missions. Or even stats. Mike Piazza has been batting .170 and finally cracked a home run for me. Sorry, you can't just erase history- I was there! I saw it!
PRO/CON: The difficulty for a newcomer can be intimidating. Coming from the cartoon world of SMB, I'm used to cracking the bat all over the field. Not so much here, but while the added challenge puts me behind the 8 ball in terms of completing some challenges, I think that the difficulty and desire to improve will hold my interest longer.
PRO: The auction house is such an obvious improvement over the other games. You know that you're getting fair market value without using a janky 3rd party site that kinda sorta tracks auction pricing. And while some may not like wild price fluctuations (especially with so many new players like myself flooding the market), it's been fairly easy to make some quick stubs by flipping cards as result of those fluctuations.
PRO: Card obtainability. In NHL, I know that I will never, ever obtain the vast majority of endgame cards. That's no fun. I like that there is always a path forward toward getting good cards in MLB. I don't mind a grind or rewards being difficult to acquire as long as there's a goal with clearly defined objectives.
TL;DR The Show 21 has been a breath of fresh air for me, despite a few obvious hiccups. It's an incredibly immersive experience that has consumed nearly all of my gaming time for over a month, and will continue to do so. I clearly like these types of games a lot, so I had a feeling it was going to be a hit- and I haven't been disappointed.
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Good rundown of HUT; unfortunately I disagree with you on the quality of the game; it is stale in gameplay and the AI is deficient. Same basic engine since 09.
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