Major League Baseball 2K8

"The game that changed too much."

Major League Baseball 2k8 continues the popular and successful line from 2k Sports. This is the only game available to Xbox360 system owners this year.

Gameplay - Baseball's rules are pretty well known, but if you're in the dark about America's pastime, I'll fill you in. Each game has nine innings. These innings are separated in top and bottoms halves. These halves determine who bats; the home or visiting team. Each team has three outs per inning. The object is to get players around all three bases and bring them home, which gives you a point, or score. The team with the higher score wins the game.

One of the first things that you'll notice when you load up a game in Major League Baseball 2k8 is the new pitching interface. For a long time, pitching has been handled by pressing a certain colored button that represents a certain pitch. In order to get complete accuracy and power, you had to let go of the button at a certain point. This was the industry norm for a long time, all the way from NES baseball. Major League Baseball 2k8 tries something new, though. You select your pitch with a button still, but in order to throw it, you have to pull back on an analog stick, and then release the analog stick like you would throw a ball. For example, to "throw" a curve ball, you have to pull the analog stick back, then rotate it forward before letting go. While it seems like a good, fresh idea in theory, the final product is scrambled. It's often hard to perfectly recreate the pitch you want to throw, and as a result, you end up throwing a pitiful 80 mile an hour pitch that an opponent can easily hit for a home run. It takes a lot of time, skill, and understanding to final be able to pitch well, and even when you think you've got the hang of it, innings can get very frustrating when you can't place the ball where you want it. The strike zone always seems too small and there were several instances when the umpires calls seemed dubious.

When you're up to bat, you control your player a lot like the pitching sequence. When the opponent's pitcher throws a ball, you have to pull back on the analog stick almost right away, then push forward after a short amount of time. If you take too long to push forward, you swing late and miss. If you do it too early, you swing early and miss. If you don't plant your foot, most times you get an out. The batting is a lot more difficult to "get" than the pitching, and that's saying a lot. Even after playing for a few months, the controls seem random and disjointed. The timing is near impossible to get, since most pitchers throw at different times and different speeds. The game also seems to lag, not due to graphic, but just due to games seeming "boring". There isn't enough excitement to keep you interested game wise for very long.

Luckily, you can switch over to old default controls. Doing this makes you unable to get about half of the game's achievements, but it at least makes the game a little bit more enjoyable. I've still found batting to be a little bit harder than expected, even with default controls on. Hitting the button at the right time is very, very hit or miss. There are some days when I can not get any hits at all because of controls. While sometimes innovation is a good thing, these "stick controls" don't make the game easier or more fun in any way. In fact, they only make the game more frustration and less inviting to new players. The old mantra, "if it isn't broken, don't fix it", has never been more true.

The in-game menus are straightforward and clutter free, and the create a player system is excellent. While I'm not a fan of fantasy drafts, I did try it out and it didn't seem to have any major flaws. Downloaded content is free so far, which is a huge plus, especially since the content is so good. Online is handled well, with different difficulty areas for different level of players.

The card mini-game is very fun, but it seems a little bit pointless after a while.

Graphics - Sports games are held up to a standard to have a good look and feel. This is another category that Major League Baseball stumbles in. The player models all look the same; it's almost like the designers made a chubby guy, a skinny guy, and a medium guy, and just pasted different faces and skin tones on top. A lot of the players don't look anything like they do in real life. The models often seem to jerk around and freeze while on the field. This is especially obvious during pre-game warm ups. The camera is decent enough. There are rarely any frame rate drops or slow downs, although playing on an HDTV really brings out a blur effect when the ball in in the field. The fields are all up to par; bases and foul lines are standard white, the grasses are all vibrant green. Unfortunately, the crowd seems to house all the same 6 or 7 fans during games, and they all react with the same cookie cutter crowd motions, although to be fair, there hasn't been a game yet with a truly great crowd.

Sound - The sound effects are, to me, the most brilliant part of the game. The way the crowd reacts, regardless of how they look, is fine tuned. They cheer when the time is appropriate, and they react negatively when it's necessary. The crack of the bat and the punch of a ball going into a catchers mitt were all caught perfectly. Sometimes your players will have little snips oif dialog, as will the umpires.

The announcing, on the other had, in nowhere near the standards that it needs to be. Joe Morgan and Jon Miller handle the in game analyzing, which is good, having well known professionals doing the broadcast. It's a shame that they are quiet way too often, and that when they do talk, it's unrelated to the play on the field. Sometimes they talk about plays that happened two or three innings ago. This happens a lot more than it should, and it gets really distracting after while. Other times, they're just plain wrong, stating that a person is safe when they are out.

Jeanne Zelasko handles the pre-game talk, which I don't have much against, other than it's the same speech every time.

Overall - This game had a lot of potential, but I think they may have set the bar a little too hgih. The result is a game that just is not fun to play. And if you're playing a game and you're not having fun, what's the point? It really wish that there was another MLB game on the market, but since that's impossible, if you're a die-hard baseball fan, this will just have to do for a year.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/08

Game Release: Major League Baseball 2K8 (US, 03/03/08)