David Toole Senior Producer, GameSpot Live	Recent Favorite: Final Fantasy X, Frequency Game Previously Wanted, But Not Anymore: Gunvalkyrie Arcade Game I Can't Wait For: Soul Calibur 2

Bugging Out Over NFL 2K2

I can't stand it when a developer decides to release a game that's obviously buggy and not complete, so I want to rant about one such game in particular. Fortunately, these sorts of games don't happen very often--or maybe it's that people don't notice very often--but every once in a while, a video game that's littered with bugs and other problems that should have easily been caught during its QA cycle is released. The example I'm thinking of now is NFL 2K2 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

Honestly, I haven't sat down and really gotten into any football game in a couple of years. I believe the original NFL 2K was the last one I played thoroughly. I was never really interested in the online play of NFL 2K1, and knowing that there were no other big differences in the game other than roster updates, I didn't see any need to spend $50 on it. When I heard that NFL 2K2 was coming to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, I was interested in how it was going to look. When I finally did see the two versions in action, I was rather amazed by the field texture and the player models--the faces look fantastic. When the games finally came out, I was eager to play them. But it didn't take long for me to stumble upon some frustrating problems.

The face textures aren't buggy, that's for sure.

The first one that I clearly noticed was when I fumbled in the end zone. No, not my end zone--the end zone I needed to be in to score a touchdown. I jumped up to catch the ball in the end zone and was hit on the way down, after both my feet appeared to hit the ground. The ball popped out of my hands when I was hit, and it was called a fumble, as the other team recovered it and ran it out of the end zone for a few yards. A touchdown it should have been, but it was not. Even if both feet hadn't hit the ground, it should have been called an incompletion at the very least. I would have loved to see what would have happened if I had tackled the player who recovered the fumble in the end zone. This happened on the Xbox version of NFL 2K2.

Another bug I found was when I threw the ball during one play, the ball went in and out of the hands of a defender, and the play was blown dead. But the game called it an interception. I was shocked, and I thought I was blind for a second. After looking at the replay, it was clear--the ball was by no means caught by anyone and should have been called an incompletion. When the play was blown dead, the ball was lying on the ground with no one within three yards of it. This bug occurred on the PlayStation 2 version.

			Have you encountered any odd bugs in either the Xbox or PS2 versions of NFL 2K2? Yes No Haven't played them

The last big bug I ran across happened when a safety occurred. I was playing the Xbox version of NFL 2K2 against a friend of mine, and I kicked the ball off to him. He caught the ball in the corner of his end zone and then ran to the other side of it. He then proceeded to run back across to the other side of the end zone and then turned upfield and ran the ball 108 yards for a touchdown. But clipping was called back in the end zone, which resulted in a safety--two points for me! What happened next was wacky. Since the safety was called against him, he was supposed to free-kick it to me from his 20-yard line. Instead, the game had me kick to him from his 20-yard line. All I had to do was kick the ball 20 yards to kick it into the end zone. Of course, I ended up kicking it way past the back of the end zone. This is a bug that isn't easy to catch, as the scenario that occurred is quite rare, but it is nonetheless a huge problem in the game.

Hopefully, NFL 2K2 will be rid of these bugs.

Unfortunately, I have no video or screenshots to show off the bugs I've been talking about. But I had at least one witness for two of them, since they occurred when I was playing head-to-head against a friend. I have found a number of other bugs in the game--like fumbles occurring right after I catch the ball, although the ball pops up before any of my feet hit the ground--but they aren't nearly as major as the ones I've mentioned.

It simply confuses me as to how at least a couple of the bugs I have discovered weren't caught by the QA team. I've played about 25 to 30 games of NFL 2K2 for the PS2 and Xbox and discovered these simple bugs. The QA team easily should have. Don't get me wrong--I love NFL 2K2. It just irks me that it has these problems. Let's hope buggy console games will become less common rather than more common.