The AFL has today announced AFL Evolution 2 which will be coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in 2019.
As with AFL Evolution (which came out in April 2017), the game will be developed by Melbourne Studio Wicked Witch.
The new version will feature both the Toyota AFL Premiership Season and the NAB AFL Women’s Competition and its players following an extensive process to recreate likeness.
The number of AFL venues included will increase to 15 with the introduction of highly-detailed representations of Ballarat’s MARS Stadium, TIO Traeger Park in Alice Springs and Hobart’s Blundstone Arena.
The game will also feature the VFL, SANFL, WAFL, NEAFL and TAC Cup competitions.
Not a lot of other information has been revealed about the game, but you’d expect that Wicked Witch will be looking to incorporate more face scanning of players, and obviously updated rosters and the like will be included. Whilst we haven’t seen any of the game in action, it’s pretty reasonable to expect that it’ll be running on the same engine.
We gave the original AFL Evolution a 6/10 and said:
AFL has long been lost in translation when it comes to gaming. I concede that the difficulty of emulating a game as nuanced as footy would be through the roof. An oval ball that’s punted end over end? Tricky to code, you’d have to think. Not to mention the wildly creative Indigenous players, forever crafting new and bold ways to make the football move, no game of our great game is ever going to hold a candle to the real thing.
It still isn’t a 1:1 representation of footy. On the odd occasion, you’ll pull off a passage of play that makes you feel as though you’ve been blessed by the messiah Chris Judd himself. This joy will probably be short-lived, however, as once you master the game, most matches will be a one-sided poleaxing. That being said, Evolution is as faithful a representation of our game as we’ve had. It’s by no means a leap forward, more like a tip-toe in the right direction.
FIFA it ain’t, but it wasn’t ever going to be. AFL Evolution is a game that, given its niche market, we’re pretty fortunate to have. Wicked Witch have yet to craft the perfect footy game, but there’s certainly fun to be had here.
