I'm trying really hard to formulate a scenario where I don't completely hate 2k Sports Major League Baseball 2k8.
It's not working. I really enjoy the new pitching mechanics, it's both challenging and fun. But I despise the fact that the slightest mistake gets punished with a home run. I've been watching, tracking and playing baseball for two decades, I know that a single bad pitch can alter the outcome of a game, but that is not an element laced in certainty. It CAN and sometimes DOES change the course of an outing, but not ALWAYS. While I am still getting a hang of the system, I find it odd that I can pitch a three hitter with seven K's and all three of the hits are home runs, one coming from the #8 batter. Is this impossible? Not at all. It's just not very probable, and I want any ballgame that I purchase to simulate what baseball is like.
But the pitching is something that is only mildly spoiled for me. In the new batting technique, there is no way to discriminate whether you are trying to hit the ball on the ground or in the air, for power or just contact. You can, to some extent, alter the direction you hit the ball in, but other than that, batting is just a timing game, and one that I'm not very good at. If I wasn't a fan of the pitching (and such a hard ass that I'm determined to get better at the plate) I'd be managing only in my franchise mode.
Here's a few little items that just absolutely personify my rampant disgust for this title:
- There is a Winning Probably Average Meter Thing that tells you how likely you are to win or lose, generally, it seems, based on the disparity between the scores. If I am down by six in the bottom of the 8th, I am well aware that I have very little chance of winning. Thanks. This is just an annoyance and not really a bug or anything. It is just the biggest of the things that seem to be superfluous in a game full of problems.
- During the final innings of the game, when they show this graph and recap the big plays that determined the outcome so far, the analyst ALWAYS refers to any home run hit as an inside-the-park home run. Every single one. So far, although I have given up quite a few homers, none of them have been in the park. A few have come close, thanks to the next item. I'm very surprised to find out that the guy who says this, Steve Physioc, is a real person. I'd think he'd have a problem with sounding like a complete idiot in a video game every time I get to the recap.
- When fielders get close to a ball, sometimes they seem to give up. Once an outfielder gets "camped" under or in front of a ball, they go into an animation that basically keeps me from moving them very much, which has led to more than one hard hit balls from scampering right past a fielder while I am holding the stick down hard in the direction of the ball.
- After five straight days of rain at the beginning of my first franchise mode season (first in Philly, then in St. Louis), I had my first rain out in the first inning of a game. The umps called it, and I thought it was cool. However, when it dumped me back to the schedule screen, there was nothing indicating that the game had been rained out. It was still there, as if I had never played it. I clicked on the game to get some sort of indication that there was a rain out, and it prompted me to play again. What?? The game had just been rained out, and so the game was pretending that it just had never happened. It had to be wrong, I thought. So I attempted to jump to the next day, thinking it would take into account the rain delay, and it simulated the rained out game. In case you were wondering, I lost the simmed game, 5-4.
- The announcers get cut off with no prompting from me. I understand that if I mash the A button, I'm going to cut off whatever interesting tidbit they are feeding me. However, when they hit the rain delay and decided to fill the time with baseball trivia, I was intrigued. It seemed cool. Joe Miller says "let's do trivia" (paraphrased, of course) and then they cut to the umpires and my guys on the bench and Joe Miller cuts himself off to say that the game has been called because of the rain. What the hell happened to the trivia?
- The same thing happens during the intro sequence of every game in franchise mode. They are talking about how awesome the game is going to be, are just about to get to the pitchers when they are just cut off mid-sentence and I go to the first pitch. There's a message at the top that says "Press Start To Continue" but I've sat there with my hands completely off the controller and I get the same behavior.
- When I do want to skip a scene, specifically the afore-mentioned Winning Percentage recap, it takes forever. The first button press skips the intro blather to a loading screen. Then a highlight comes on and I press A again. Another loading screen. Another highlight, another button press, another loading screen, back to the game. That means I've got about ten seconds minimum of trying to get through something I don't want to see. The big thing is, and this may be because it's a sponsored feature (now there's something that sounds like real baseball) but I can't find an option to turn it off, just an odd "Cutscenes" option that cryptically claims to leave on only "necessary" cutscenes.
- In the first season game, Ryan Zimmerman knocked down a hard shot up the line and it rolled just foul of the bag. I moved him to pick up the ball and run the two steps back to the bag to force out the runner heading to third, but because Zimmerman had gone the two steps after the ball, the pitcher, John Patterson, sprinted to cover the third base bag, ran headfirst into Zimmerman and fell down, breaking his ankle and putting my #1 starter out for 2-3 months. Oh, also, the guy running to third was safe.
- I haven't played all the way through a season, but when you start a new franchise, there doesn't seem to be any spring training that I can see. You get your team together and the season starts. That's just a nitpick, but damn, with such a good franchise mode, it surprised me.
And the franchise mode is phenomenal. I can't tell you how happy it made me to see the depth of that mode. An odd thing was that as soon as I was hired for as the GM of the Nationals (my home team), I was given a GM goal to dump off Christian Guzman. Now, this was weird because the Nats have been trying to get him to be a healthy part of the lineup for years now, but it made me glad because I agree that he should be traded. I think he has too much trouble staying healthy. But that's not the point. The point is, I went to the trading block and had a number of options. I could get offers for a specific player, look for offers on a position, or search for a specific player to build a trade for. I put Guzman up against starting pitchers (they tell you right there what your rank is for each element, and not just by position, but by skillset, home run hitters, speed guys, etc) and was astonished to find 43 separate offers to roll through, mostly young minor league talent. Each team had a few variations of deals for me too. I eventually found a 19 year old hurler who fit the bill from the Yankees, but that level of thoroughness was stunning. What is most frustrating about the franchise mode is that the depth is so good, but everything else is so bad. It's a diamond in the rough, certainly, but I'm going to have to trim it down into nothingness to make it palatable.
I haven't even gotten into the graphics, something the review sites tend to be harping on. It generally looks beautiful, but shows bad choices all over. First off, the framerate is choppy at time. That's not a showstopper at all for me, but when there are things like "realistic" cloth physics on the uniforms, I wonder if they shouldn't have maybe shelved a few "features" to get a smooth running game. Think about all the buzz Madden got about claiming 60fps. Fast fun gameplay is more important than uniforms that billow about like it's hurricane season. I'm telling you, it is a very overcooked effect. Tune it down a notch or make it a selectable graphics option for those of us who would rather the game just move smoothly.
There's some other glitches in the graphics, but nothing I really care about. I've tried not to invoke the MVP series, because I'll sound like a fanboy, but I'm a PC gamer, and 2K Sports exclusive MLB license has screwed me on the baseball front. Just this past year I've gotten a 360, and now I have a chance to play a ball game again, and this is what I get. It's insulting in the face of how much I defended 2K Sports when EA grabbed the exclusive NFL license. "Competition makes better games", I said. That's what 2K is all about.
Except, not really.
They have a patch in the works, apparently. No ETA, but that's pretty standard practice. I'm hopeful, but there is a lot too take care of. I'm afraid that they will just listen to the big site reviews and handle the framerate and online issues, and not the presentation and simple basic baseball stuff. My dad always taught me that key to baseball was the fundamentals. Know the basics and do that well and everything else falls into place. Hopefully 2K Sports takes that to heart.