Major League Baseball 2K9 Review
admin | March 6, 2009 | no comments
It’s amazing to see a game so determined to shoot itself in the foot. In many ways, Major League Baseball 2K9 is an amazing effort compared to previous installments in the series, fixing a lot of what the game was lacking in feel and authenticity. But MLB 2K9 ships in such a buggy state, that you’ll find yourself laughing at some of its weirder glitches. That is, when you’re not cursing its name. MLB 2K9, on the surface, is a well-designed baseball game, easy to pick up and play but with some sophisticated gameplay technology behind it to help enhance the realism. Animations look great for the most part, fielding has a smoothness to it that was missing before, and the use of the right analog stick for batting and pitching seems refined from before and much easier to use. Those are all very good things. Unfortunately there are many bad things to ruin the experience of the game. Not all of those things are full on bugs or glitches, but there plenty enough of those to make one laugh at loud. During one game, I had a random player model appear in the batter’s box right next to a different batter who was actually taking his AB. The figured stayed there until the ball was actually put into play. Not 100% sure, but I don’t think that’s legal in the real game. Other goofs up seem more the victim of weird tuning of the controls. I experienced a seriously heightened rate of errors thanks to some weird design choices. For instance, outfielders seem to be unable to catch the ball if you’re still making fine movements to the stick while it drops from the sky. You can still be directly on the target, but your player will simply not reach up and catch it. There were a ton of problems with my first baseman too. On plenty of easy throws from the other infielders, he would move his foot off the bag for no discernable reason, and not make any scripted effort to get back. Thanks to delayed reactions from the umps on the field, I often didn’t realize I had missed the base until the runner already crossed it. These were definitely problems with the game’s tuning and not my relative skill level. I’ve been playing baseball video games since the Intellivision. While pulling off a simple put out proved to be unfairly difficult, other elements of the gameplay proved to be unfairly easy. Batting, which benefits from improved swing control is almost too easy. I was averaging 20 hits per game no matter what team I chose or what pitcher I was facing. While this may seem fun and really stroke my ego, if I play out every single game of an entire season in Franchise mode, I’m going to end up with a hitter with 200 home runs. You can affect the relative difficulty of many aspects of the game using sliders, but the game should feel tuned right out of the box. And I did review it right out of the box; we received a boxed retail copy over a week ago. Right in time for the start of the season, but one wonders if that hard and fast deadline is what’s behind the game’s seeming unfinishedness when it comes to bug-fixing. Again, the bugs and glitches and bad tuning ruin what would otherwise be a really good experience. There are some great touches to the gameplay, including a simple throw-meter, easy to understand base-running interface, and an arrow on the ground to show you the direction of your bunt. Modes are satisfying with Franchise and Play Ball options and the teams, which can have their rosters updated automatically over Xbox Live, seem well researched and scouted. There are so many things I liked about where 2K was headed with this game, it hit me hard to discover how undercooked it is. In this era of everyone having exclusive licenses with the major sports leagues, MLB 2K9 is just proof how that policy can come and bite us in the butt. Want a better baseball video game experience? Unfortunately it’s on the PS3 with MLB The Show. Xbox 360 gamers are stuck with this rough-hewn and frustrating game that could have otherwise been a gem. Instead, that no-hitter in the bottom of the ninth got broken up by a grand slam.
Source: TeamXbox
Category: Xbox 360
