Don't reinvent the wheel...make it more efficient.
GRAPHICS (5):
MLB 2K9 was a beautiful game...two years ago. Stadiums, though not awful, are not as good as 2K7. The field dimensions, architecture and color schemes for some stadiums are off to make room for ads (I.E. Wrigley Field). Player models are okay at best, uniforms seemed to be glued on, and for some odd reason every player has a gut. Player faces are sometimes good, and other times disgusting. Case in point, Albert Pujols looks absolutely horrendous. And don't even get me started on Manny.... Signature styles are passable. Pitcher deliveries are pretty spot on, but batting stances are a toss up. Some well known players have either obviously flawed stance animations, or something that just stands out as wrong. One example, Carlos Pena has a generic batting stance, and A-Rod seems to be doing squats...
Running looks awkward, fielding has jarring transitions from gathering to throwing, dives sometimes look very weird and very painful (i.e. belly flops), and collision detection is completely non existent, sometimes even when you're hitting.
On the plus side, replays were fixed.
GAMEPLAY (5.5):
Hitting and pitching has been severely dumbed down this year, to appeal to casual gamers. Not such a bad idea, if the majority of gamers who played baseball games were in fact casual gamers. The hitting mechanic was by far the best gameplay mechanic of last years game (in my opinion at least), so you can assume that I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it had become to finish the game with 20 hits and 18 runs against some guy by the name of Johan Santana.
Pitching was "improved." It is so much easier now to hit your spots, on every pitch, with any pitcher, despite his confidence and/or stamina. Meatballs are gone and have been replaced with idiotic backstops, who will call for a curveball up an in on a 2-0 count to ANYONE, or will nag you with fastball request all game long, some down the middle of the plate.
The homeruns have been subdued somewhat, so that's a good thing.
Fielding now has hyper sensitive controls that do no favors for guys like Hanley Ramirez. The dive/jump/wall climb function has been mapped to the 'X' button (360), which was a good idea and has a good risk/reward balance. However, fielders will sometimes dive away from the ball.
Prior to the game being patched there was an extremely frustrating first baseman glitch where their foot would be off the bag on most throws to first. At least this didn't just happen to you, the CPU was not immune to this, just significantly less so.
While we're on the topic of CPU fielders, they are sometimes superior defenders, making diving stops left and right, sprinting to their right eight to ten steps, and then making diving/belly flop stops on scorchers. And, they can do this repeatedly without injury. I find this rather impressive, but it IS like being poked repeatedly with a stick. Other times the CPU will make some really ridiculous gaffs, for example charging a fly ball only to turn around and run the other way, or look to play a ball off the wall only to dive into the wall, giving up a triple.
SOUND (6):
As soon as you get to the menu you'll realize that something is wrong when "What I Like About You" starts emanating from your speakers. Music aside (as awful as it is), the announcers are pretty good, as long as you don't plan on investing much time in franchise mode with the commentary on. Repetition is not as big an issue in a single game, but becomes so as you get deeper into your franchise. There are also instances where the commentary doesn't coincide with the play on screen. Nonetheless, it's an improvement over the Miller-Morgan team from last year.
Stadium noise is lacking. The game is just as exciting to the fans in the first inning as it is in the bottom of the ninth, with the winning run on 3rd and only one out recorded. The stadium music I learned to phase out, but I have heard that the organ can be rather annoying.
There seems to be little hope for us 360 owners without a PS3, in playing a good game of baseball. 2K's 3 year plan seemed to have tripped and fallen down a flight of stairs in year two, and they decided that they needed to replace the stairs instead of mopping up the mess at the top of it. Some good features were removed, for example, the ability to edit batting stances or pitching deliveries is now gone. Less is more I guess... There are many other issues, but as it stands, this review has caused me great emotional stress. Lack of effort, and a seemingly lack of desire to improve, shows just how much 2K cares about their baseball community. My money goes to Gamestop, but $54.99 for a used copy of this game still feels like a swift kick in the privates. Thank you 2K, you've done us proud...