The Boys of Summer is at it again, now that MLB 2k6 is the only game in town, is it worth buy?
Now with that said, to the game. 2K Sports had to know they needed to hit a home run with this game. They took, what I thought was the better baseball game last year by EA and shelved it, so they had better come out firing.
First of the Presentation, unlike the Xbox and Playstation game is amazing! The voiceovers are all well done, and timely, there are a lot of them also. Seem to have the whole Baseball Tonight crew in it. There is a lot of cool overlays, and graphics, there is a lot to see. The replays are well done, and seamless.
The Graphics in the game are very well done, but not revolutionary. The faces, of the Superstars look well done, but the rest are very generic and plan. The animations are also very well done, but at times seem to face the wrong way, and do odd moves. A ball hit to the shortstop, then he tosses it to first, I swear it looks like he is facing the pitcher not the first baseman. There are a lot of little thing like, you can see the breath of players on a cold day. The Outfielders bouncing off the wall if he hits it too hard and I love the mannerisms of the players as they ready themselves. There are tons of things to love here.
The sound, again, are very well done, The Baseball Tonight crew does a great job of following the game. The fans, music and stadium announcer are all there, and are well done.
The most important part of a baseball game is the pitcher/batter interface. If this isn’t done right, the rest is just a wash. 2K6 Sports knock this out of the ball park! There is a somewhat large learning curve here (no help from the very poor manual), but after a while you will get a hang of it. The pitching is by far the hardest part to get adjusted to. In default mode, you have to use your target to show the “break” of the ball, not the location of the pitch, and that can be a real chore, especially if you don’t know baseball very well. It’s more realistic but it takes a lot of time to get use to it. You can change that in the options though. Batting comes in 2 favors; in default you use your “swing stick” which is basically your right joystick to swing at the ball. You need to pull back to start your swing and lift your leg, and let go to swing away. In theory it sound cool, but again it takes time to get use to the timing. The other way to bat is the old fashion “jam at the button at the right time” mode. Not very realistic but my easier to use.
There are tons of other options in the game; it has franchise mode, season mode, and GM mode. There is also a very cool World Championship mode in the game, be because I’m a American, I probably wouldn’t be that good at it {sigh}. The only other thing I want to mention is that awful menu music in the game. Normally I don’t care, and just turn it off, but this is so bad, that I just had to mention it here.
Awesome game, and even if it’s not, it’s the only one for the 360!