MLB 2005

"Indepth Career and Franchise Modes gives MLB 2005 an edge"

Every year I find myself becoming more of a sports game fan. Now that might sound inconsequential to this review, but considering my first love in the gaming world is primarily the RPG Genre and considering that I’m not actually a huge fan of playing baseball or watching baseball the question might be raised as to why I like playing baseball video games? Because every year, along with all the other major sporting games, they’re becoming more and more packed with RPG-styled options.

The rarest of these, which surprises me seeing as it also strikes me as the most profitable one, is the Career Mode which is currently found almost exclusively in MLB 2005. While most games, including this one which we’ll get into later, has a Dynasty Mode, the Career Mode allows you to focus on one baseball player, fresh out of the farms and right into Spring Training competing for a spot on a major league roster. From those humble beginnings you will take the role of this player (whom you can even put your face on if you have an EyeToy, which I don’t). You will be given contract offers, play hard so that you can get Attribute Points to improve your character, request more playing time, try and get your guy traded, haggle over contract terms and try to get into the Hall of Fame. Eventually you will retire, which you can do at any time in your career, however it’s much more fun to try and play in the Majors as long as you possibly can (which depends partially on your character’s abilities).

MLB 2005’s Career Mode, pretty much by default, is the best offered in any of the sports games currently out there, but it isn’t without its flaws. For one thing the AI, which determines how much playing time you receive for the most part, bases its decision more on your overall skills rank (determined by how many ability points you’ve collected) then your statistics. This is most annoying in your rookie year where you could be batting .476 or have an ERA of under one and still be put on the inactive roster. What redeems this problem is your ability to request more active playing time which will probably be accepted if you’ve had a good year thus far. The other issue I comes with the fact that you can’t just play your character in the actually ball games. Instead you are every player on your team. Baseball is a long game, and there are 162 of them in a year. It’s inconvincible to me that anyone has so much time to play that many games in full. Luckily you can simulate as many games as you desire but it would be so much nicer if you could just play your battings at bats or when your pitchers up and not even have to watch or play the rest of the game. That way you can play for your guy and still finish his entire career in a reasonable amount of time.

Going to the more common RPG-styled mode is the Franchise Mode (sometimes called Dynasty Mode in other games). This Franchise Mode goes into much more depth then the games main competitor, MVP Baseball 2004. It reaches a level almost equal to Madden 2004, which I believe currently sets the bar for all other Dynasty/Franchise Modes in any other game and it is beyond me why EA doesn’t essentially borrow the content of Madden 2004 to use in all they’re other major sports titles.

The first difference you might notice this Franchise Mode and its MVP Baseball 2004 counterpart is it does not have a salary cap determined by an AI Owner at the end of each year. Instead what you get is an easily accessible balance sheet (a more in-depth look of your income and expenses is also available) that shows you how much money you’re making or losing. Though you might be tempted to run into the red, it causes lasting and serious damage to your franchise, crippling your ability to properly function in later seasons. The ability to take loans is good, but it also means your more then likely to go into debt. In my first attempt at playing the Toronto Blue Jays I was over 20 million dollars in the red and had already borrowed 80 million dollars from the bank by June of 2004 (game-time). Once you do learn how to run a profitable franchise though, the mode actually becomes pretty fun.

Unlike MVP Baseball 2004 where your main franchise concern is very much player-oriented. Dealing with your current guys, trying to keep them happy, looking for potential in your AA and AAA farm systems as you attempt to run a 120-year long dynasty (as best I can tell MLB 2005 franchise mode is endless but I haven’t read anything to confirm that). This one does not have the farm system, though you have an inactive roster which is similar, it doesn’t go into the micromanagement level that MVP offers. But it does offer a whole lot more to make you feel less like just the coach and more like the general manager and maybe even the owner. For one thing you are in charge of the hiring and funding of your Management and Scouting Staff, both of which are the critical background players when building dynasties. You are in charge of the business aspect, more specifically your facilities (i.e. stadium) and marketing (i.e. TV ads). Your chief source of income will be from ticket and stadium vendors so you’ll have to pay close attention to both if you want to turn a profit and still have a winning team.

Of course if the RPG aspect isn’t your cup of tea you can just play in one of the regular modes, such as Exhibition, Season, or Playoff Mode. It’s also possible for you to play tournaments online, provided you have a network adaptor.

For these modes the game-time gameplay comes to the forefront. The controls are pretty easy to learn. For batting they start off really easy at the Rookie Mode level (just press X to swing the bat when the ball comes close enough, and O to bunt) however it gets more difficult in each of the next two modes, Veteran and All-Star, providing something of a natural learning curve for you to lean on as you play.

The graphics are pretty good, but I didn’t notice much of a difference between that of MVP’s. The players look pretty crisp and reasonably personalized; I imagine we’ll have to wait until the next generation of consoles to see much better from any of the major game companies in the field of baseball games.

The audio however was disappointing, but not so much more as most sports games. The key problem is repetitiveness. While it doesn’t mean much for the game announcing, which I felt was nothing noteworthy but had nothing really wrong about it, the background music eventually becomes annoying and then eventually unbearable, no matter how much I like the songs at the beginning. I find myself muting the game just because it comes to the point where no sound is better then any of the songs. I understand why they would think to music in the background of the option menus to act as something of a filler, but instead of wasting their money paying royalties to bands, why not just have generic music with no-lyrics playing in the background? At east that’s less likely to annoy me after hearing for the one hundredth time.

At a Glance…

Gameplay/Challenge: 76%
Features/Content: 93%
Visual/Audio: 61%
Replay Value: 91%

Overall: 80% or 8 out of 10

MLB 2005 isn’t without its flaws, but it is still an excellent baseball game, especially for people who like the RPG aspect of the games. And at 10 dollars (USD) cheaper then MVP Baseball 2004 at the time of writing, this game offers you the best value for your buck.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/19/04