Over the past week, I have spent a lot (A LOT) of time playing 2KSports latest installment of their baseball franchise, “Major League Baseball 2K10,” on our XBox 360. According to my wife, I have missed our daughters first words, first steps, first day of school, first date and her wedding.
Mrs. Prof will never understand.
She did finally wrestle the remote away from me. Mysteriously, she all of the sudden knew how to switch from HDMI to Component inputs as if she has known all along and was just pretending to be technologically illiterate.
So until she goes to sleep, I will take this break from “MLB 2K10″ to let you guys know my thoughts about the game so far.
My Favorite Features…
Gameplay Controls: Ultimately, once you get past the glitz and glammer, the most important aspect of the game is battle between the pitcher and the batter. And in “MLB 2K10,” a video game has finally got it right. From both the mound and the plate, the controls are intuitive and give you more of a sense that you are actually controlling the player’s arms as opposed to entering some special code and hoping for the appropriate response.
- PITCHING: Throwing specific types of pitches requires a specific movement using the right analog stick. The movements are just tricky enough that you need a little bit of practice, but not so much that you feel lost. And the movements seem somewhat logical for the type of pitch being thrown. They are even reversed for left-handers, which is just the type of seemingly meaningless detail that actually adds to the realism. But maybe our favorite pitching feature is the stress factor. As the pitcher tires or the stressful situations arise (runners in scoring position, less than 2 outs) the target will shake and the controller will rumble making the process of aiming as difficult as you would expect in a real game.
- HITTING: With hitting, the learning curve is a bit steeper as you need one analog stick to control trajectory of the batted ball (ground ball vs fly ball and pull vs opposite field) and the other to swing the bat. As in real life, don’t expect to be knocking home runs your first time in the box. Rather, you need to get reps to get the timing down. I loved the notification just as the pitch is released as to the type of pitch. It is on-screen for just a split-second, but for anybody that has ever faced live pitching, that is exactly when a batter first recognizes the spin of the pitch. And for once a game is very unforgiving towards those that are free-swingers. The more likely you are to swing at the first pitch, the less likely that pitch will be in the strike zone. So the keys are to learn the strike zone and learn it well. You are going to strike out a lot at first, but eventually, you will get the knack and the hits will start coming.
The “MLB Today” Feature: I admit, this feature seemed kinda corny to me at first, but it grew on me quickly. Basically, with “MLB Today” you can play any game that is scheduled that day in real life and play the game using the same lineups and rosters that are being used in real life. So if Carl Crawford is traded and Desmond Jennings is called up to make his big league debut against the Yankees in Replica Yankee Stadium, that is the roster you will get in “MLB Today.”
