Hands-on: College Lacrosse 2010 (Xbox 360)
Looking for a Lacrosse game? Well, if you have an Xbox 360 you can grab a good one for $5. That’s because College Lacrosse 2010 was released on the Community Games portal for a meager 400 points. Is it a good deal? In a word – yes.
Indie developer Carlo Sunseri (with the backing of sponsor Inside Lacrosse) decided it was about time someone did the sport some justice in the gaming world as Lacrosse has been criminally under-represented (with Blast Lacrosse for the PS1 and an appearance in Big League Sports on the Wii).
Outside of the Inside Lacrosse logos, this game isn’t licensed. There are no real NCAA schools in CL2010. Instead you have a smattering of various fake teams to play with that are loosely based on real life colleges (Turtles has to be Maryland, no?). Hopefully nobody actually expected this game to have the full NCAA treatment. But Sunseri saw to it to give the user total customization of the game.
Read more of our review by clicking below…
Outside of Pro-Evolution Soccer, this is easily one of the best creation suites available in console sports gaming (not saying a lot, but it’s true). Sunseri really had no choice to include these options in a sim-oriented title like this and, for the most part, they are rather deep but easy to use. Whole conferences can be created and individual teams can be edited across the board. Jersey kits for home, away and third are available for editing and rosters can be named to your liking (though there isn’t any bench or reserve players in the game). No custom logo options are available, but I’m ok with that.
With unlimited space for creation (only limited by the user’s hard drive), an ambitious player can create every team in Division 1 if they so desire. Oh, and did I say created teams can be taken online?
Yes, there is online! I’m not familiar with that many community games on an individual basis, but I do know this, not many of them support online multiplayer. Of course, this is all host-based (no servers here), but it works. I even took my created Maryland Terrapins team out there (to get pounded by the fantasy Turtles squad). Yeah, users can take their created 5-star squads online, but I’ll take that “drawback” and have fun, competent, lag-free online gameplay with my $5 purchase.
Speaking of game play (that is something important, isn’t it?), I have to report that College Lacrosse 2010 packs a fairly competent game on the field. I’m no lacrosse expert by any means – but I had little trouble getting the ins-and-outs down and playing respectably. A couple issues I did notice – the juke maneuvering wasn’t very effective (and wasn’t very obvious on-screen making me wonder if I even did juke) and that the players have a rather slippy/glide-y feel to them. You don’t feel like your running as much as you feel like your skating – which actually isn’t bad but does make the game feel a bit more arcadey. Also, it might just be me, but face-offs seem really hard to win.
Whether intended or not, the gameplay stradles the fence between arcade accessibility and sim gameplay. The presentation and intent seems to be a sim lacrosse experience, but there are enough arcade nuances to make the experience a bit more looser than that of a sim. I mean this in more of a complimentary way, as most people don’t really follow lacrosse enough to demand a Madden-esque recreation of the sport and would rather get right into the game and enjoy the uniqueness of the sport without having to learn everything about it first. EA did this with its short-lived localization of the Rugby brand on the PS2 and Sunseri does it here with CL2010.
Season mode is available and is also customizable in regards to teams. Maybe the only drawback here is there isn’t as much depth as one would want, but look at it this way. Madden Arcade was just released for $15 and includes zero team/roster options and no season at all. Sunseri tops that game on both fronts and for $10 less. You simply can’t argue with that.
Sunseri is planning to release an update to fix a couple issues. On the whole you simply can’t argue with the value here. Not only do you instantly have the greatest Lacrosse game ever created, you have an ambitious attempt by a solo developer to put together a solid recreation of the sport and it came off better than a lot of full-fledged titles do (Playing this makes me really wonder how a game like Water Sports gets put on the shelves for $29.99).
For the cost of less than a rental, you’d be smart to give this one a look and support a great indie title.
Check out some video of CL2010 in action…
Haha, the faceoffs are incredibly easy to win for me. But as a lacrosse middie i’ve been trained to have fast reflexes. And thanks for this article, so true. The gameplay is ridiculously fun, and makes up for any lack of graphics that others might complain about. This game was developed by one guy, which is amazing.
Well, I can technically “win” them, but I’m bad at getting possession. Just a minor frustration for me – I know some NHL diehards that can’t win a faceoff to save their life in that game, but are quite skilled nonetheless.