Major League Baseball 2K6

"MLB2k6 or MLB 2krap?"

Okay, I've played baseball, out in the outside, for 20 years, I've been watching baseball for 20 years, I've been playing baseball videogames for 20 years, everything from Ken Griffey to All Star to World Series Baseball to Sports Talk Baseball to MVP to 2k because baseball is my life. And this game is....not that bad.

It's not the best, and it's not the worst, that's a way of looking at it. But for every thing this game does right, sadly it does 3 things wrong. I don't blame 2k for the flaws of the game, because 2k is not to blame, Kush is to blame for the faults. 2k has put out solid Football and Basketball games, with great animations, great gameplay, and stunning graphics.

Visual Concepts are the people responsible for bringing greatness to the NBA and the NFL branches of 2k Sports, but yet 2k strives for the help of Kush on the MLB branch. We need Visual Concepts to make 2k7, they take the time to get player's stats right, players appearance, and who the players are.

This game, albeit not great, not terrible has many minuscule flaws that combine to make large flaws. How hard is it to do a little research? Some Lefties in the game are righties, some sophomore key players on teams are not even in the game, and many...many player pictures are either missing or completley wrong. Some players have other players pictures for their own, or unless Greg Zaun had a twin named Dan Wheeler. There are many others.

One of my major gripes are, yes you guessed it, the animations. After the the first game I turned to my friend and I said, "If you're going to make a baseball game, you should actually watch baseball." The swings aren't bad, but they're not good. They look really stiff and have no emotion. And a good bit of the players have the "Low and Open" batting stance. I couldn't name one player with that stance. Throwing looks odd. That's all I can say, throwing looks odd, unless you're a T-Rex and we all know Dinosaurs don't play baseball.

Diving is one of the most horrible things I have ever encountered. The diving, and diving animations up until this year's instalment where some of the best animations I have seen in a baseball game, now this year it's like the player trips and falls. Plus running into walls, honestly how many times has anyone seen someone walked up to a ball picked it up and then get dazed by a left hook from the wall? I can understand if you are busting it to the ball and then run into the wall full speed and have some problems but if you just trot and bump into the wall you should sell it like The Rock getting a Stunner.

Baserunning is a dirty skank is this game while being a nice little Swedish girl. Baserunning in this game has it's high points and it's low points. If I had another index finger then I'd be okay, or had hands like an Emo kid's legs playing DDR then I think I might like it better. But it's impossible to do two things at once with the baserunning. I am a huge fan of the tap it out running though and with a little tweaking 2k could have top notch baserunning. Plus sliding is tricky...no not to actually slide but to slide how you want to slide is a freaking stab in the nut.

The batting in this game, minus the animations, is great, I love the old school tap and aim, and I love the new swing stick. Sure it's not the best, but it is a step forward in the right direction. With decent batting stances, and swing animations this game would have great batting.

Overall I'd give this game a solid 6.5/10, not the best, not the worst, and it's fun, maybe not fun 100% because of the baseball aspect, but you get some good laughs out of what this game produces.

(To disclaim, yes I am a MVP fan, but I have bought both 2k and MVP since they started producing them and was a huge fan of the World Series Baseball series back on the Dreamcast. So this was not biased in any way, shape, smell, touch, taste, or form.)

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/06