***Official MLB 2K9 Retail Version Impressions***

[bama2032]

Can you please see if the Chicago White Sox have a road alternate uniform? It should be black jersey over gray pants. Thank you.

[boomhauertjs]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

Example 4.... I got greedy on the basepaths and started to send everyone home on a warning track shot. Damon headed from 3rd to home, and another baserunner headed from 2nd to third. This was a mistake on my part because the AI recovered quickly and got the ball to 3rd. I panic and send everyone back (dumb) and my runner heading back to 2nd gets tagged out, and Damon is in no-mans land between 3rd & home. At this point, I say the hell with it and send Damon home anyway and try to take out the catcher and jar the ball lose. I fail, AI gets a double play. That should of been the 3rd out. However... I notice I have another at bat after the play, and Damon is back on 3rd like nothing happened? Its as if he went back in time and never got tagged out by the catcher. That's kinda big.

That's not good. I want to like this game. Sigh.

[JT30]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

I'm very concerned about fielding in this game. I saw about 5-6 rather head-scratching fielding problems in my first game. Needless to say, it was only one game, but having 5 such anomalies in one game isn't a good sign. Example 1... had an Oriole player in a run down between 2nd base & A-Rod. The runner committed to 3rd and I got the ball to A-Rod very early. A Rod caught the ball cleanly and the runner ran(clipped) through A-Rod While A-Rod made no attempt to touch him with the ball. No attempt at tag, no collision despite the player's 3D mass going through one-side of A-Rod and out the other. It seems like there's no baserunner-fielder collision detection whatsoever (other than with the catcher), so I'm wondering if there's no hook slides this year that take out fielders on the bag? Example 2.... My right fielder stood under a routine fly ball. He was on the icon to catch the pop up... and yet the ball fell harmlessly through his shoulder without him so much as raising his glove to try to catch it. Cost me a triple. I saw this happen to the AI too at least twice, where they are in good position, but make no attempt at a catch. Example 3.... I can cite about 4 incidents of my 1st baseman simply stepping his toe off of the bag while catching routine throws to first for what should have been easy outs. Sometimes it didn't even look like his foot was at all off the bag, but the ump called safe each time. This was extremely frustrating as it happened three times in a row in the 11th inning on routine grounders where Jeter would field the ball, and my second baseman would simply take a step towards the accurate throw towards him, and leave his foot off the bag by an inch or less. It loaded the bases on 3 infield grounders. I was not a happy camper. I can understand this if I threw wild & high at him and he had to jump off the bag to make the catch, but that wasn't the case. He'd just step off? Perhaps that's the penalty for not throwing a perfect "in the green" throw (in terms of the meter) but the throw was to the 1st baseman's glove. Example 4.... I got greedy on the basepaths and started to send everyone home on a warning track shot. Damon headed from 3rd to home, and another baserunner headed from 2nd to third. This was a mistake on my part because the AI recovered quickly and got the ball to 3rd. I panic and send everyone back (dumb) and my runner heading back to 2nd gets tagged out, and Damon is in no-mans land between 3rd & home. At this point, I say the hell with it and send Damon home anyway and try to take out the catcher and jar the ball lose. I fail, AI gets a double play. That should of been the 3rd out. However... I notice I have another at bat after the play, and Damon is back on 3rd like nothing happened? Its as if he went back in time and never got tagged out by the catcher. That's kinda big. Now, I don't mean to go all "Simon Cowell" on the game after one sitting and one complete game, but that's a disturbing amount of "technical mess things" to happen in my one and only hour with the game. More later today (after work)

Wow this sounds great

[Rebel10]

Quote: Originally Posted by jeffy777

Could you try the manager mode and tell us how that is? (if they kept it in this year...it should ask you when you select a game in your franchise if you want to play, manage, or sim). Does it look like 2K8's manager mode?

Continuing on this point, can anybody go into some depth about subbing pitchers in manager mode? This feature has been busted for three straight years -- the game has never allowed you to substitute a pitcher in manager mode while you are batting, or make any pitching changes while you are batting. Because you have to warmup pitchers before they come in, this would make managing the game in manager mode virtually impossible. For instance, if you want to warm up your closer at your first at-bat in the 9th inning, you are not able to do that.. you either need to warm him up while pitching with 2 outs in the 8th, or with 1 out while pitching in the 9th. Making this worse, pitcher stamina was very sensitive, and one extra out of warming up would drastically reduce a pitcher's stamina... so four batters of warming up could see the closer come in at 70% stamina, while 3 batters of warming up would put him at 95%. Considering that you could not make pitching changes/management while batting, when to warm up and sub was effectively a guessing game.

In 2K8, you could turn off pitcher warmups all together and then turn it back on when you're playing a game.. but that's stupid. You should be able to make pitching bench modifications while you're batting, plain and simple. If it's a manager mode, you should be able to manage.

Sorry to go on and on about 2K8, but I wanted to describe the problem as completely as I could to see if it's been fixed.

Also, does the screen "rotate" like it did in 2K7 while managing? This was super annoying to me. They removed this for 2K8, but I'm just hoping it wasn't added back in as a ... visual extra that overall detracts.

[NEWYORICAN]

Quote: Originally Posted by quietcool72

This is Scott Hemphill- Quietcool72 from Consolesports.net. Got my game yesterday. (Any of you on last week's conference call might remember me as the guy who go the "Did the minors get more attention this year?" question towards the end) Note: These impressions come from playing one game on All-Star. Yanks (me) vs. Orioles at the new Yankee Stadium. First- let me get to the positives: The game runs substantially better than last year. I saw no framey-ness like we saw last year offline. The usual 2K graphic polish is there in its glory, although it seems to me the player polygon count has gone down a bit from last year, perhaps to help performance. The commentary is pretty good from Thorne & Phillips. Not stellar, but okay. I'm just always thinking hockey when I hear Thorne. The 2K "dazzle" is in there, like fans catching fly balls and cutaways to actual coaches showing emotion about what's happening on the diamond. Hit-influence is there, and it works better than in previous years (esp. when trying to influence a grounder/deep fly ball. More on this later) New fly ball fielding perspective is pretty good for the most part..particularly for high fly balls, warning track shots, etc.- at least in terms of attempting to make the defensive play. Now, a few negative thoughts. *On All-Star, HR's still seem way too plentiful. There were 9 in my game, and way too many warning-track shots. Sliders will probably be needed yet again to tone that down. As stated before, hit influence is in there..but it might actually work too well. I shouldn't be able to regularly yank a down and away pitch to left field with such consistency as a right-handed batter (due to physics), and I also find that presing "UP" on the influence stick usually yields one of two results. A. A Home run. B. A warning-track fly-ball. Also, with HRs.. many of them I coughed up were from low pitches. The AI seems to have an uncanny knack for taking plate-skimmers over the wall, which I find a bit questionable. but compared to some things, those are just nitpicky gripes that sliders might fix... ..however. I'm very concerned about fielding in this game. I saw about 5-6 rather head-scratching fielding problems in my first game. Needless to say, it was only one game, but having 5 such anomalies in one game isn't a good sign. Example 1... had an Oriole player in a run down between 2nd base & A-Rod. The runner committed to 3rd and I got the ball to A-Rod very early. A Rod caught the ball cleanly and the runner ran(clipped) through A-Rod While A-Rod made no attempt to touch him with the ball. No attempt at tag, no collision despite the player's 3D mass going through one-side of A-Rod and out the other. It seems like there's no baserunner-fielder collision detection whatsoever (other than with the catcher), so I'm wondering if there's no hook slides this year that take out fielders on the bag? Example 2.... My right fielder stood under a routine fly ball. He was on the icon to catch the pop up... and yet the ball fell harmlessly through his shoulder without him so much as raising his glove to try to catch it. Cost me a triple. I saw this happen to the AI too at least twice, where they are in good position, but make no attempt at a catch. Example 3.... I can cite about 4 incidents of my 1st baseman simply stepping his toe off of the bag while catching routine throws to first for what should have been easy outs. Sometimes it didn't even look like his foot was at all off the bag, but the ump called safe each time. This was extremely frustrating as it happened three times in a row in the 11th inning on routine grounders where Jeter would field the ball, and my second baseman would simply take a step towards the accurate throw towards him, and leave his foot off the bag by an inch or less. It loaded the bases on 3 infield grounders. I was not a happy camper. I can understand this if I threw wild & high at him and he had to jump off the bag to make the catch, but that wasn't the case. He'd just step off? Perhaps that's the penalty for not throwing a perfect "in the green" throw (in terms of the meter) but the throw was to the 1st baseman's glove. Example 4.... I got greedy on the basepaths and started to send everyone home on a warning track shot. Damon headed from 3rd to home, and another baserunner headed from 2nd to third. This was a mistake on my part because the AI recovered quickly and got the ball to 3rd. I panic and send everyone back (dumb) and my runner heading back to 2nd gets tagged out, and Damon is in no-mans land between 3rd & home. At this point, I say the hell with it and send Damon home anyway and try to take out the catcher and jar the ball lose. I fail, AI gets a double play. That should of been the 3rd out. However... I notice I have another at bat after the play, and Damon is back on 3rd like nothing happened? Its as if he went back in time and never got tagged out by the catcher. That's kinda big. Now, I don't mean to go all "Simon Cowell" on the game after one sitting and one complete game, but that's a disturbing amount of "technical mess things" to happen in my one and only hour with the game. More later today (after work)

Wow!!, not good, not good at all 2K. This is very dissapointing. I don't know, but it seems like 2K/Take Two is skating through the Exclusive MLB license until the end by not putting too much effort on their baseball game......very sad.

[TheTruth]

I like the fade to black. Didnt seem awkward to me at all.

[brendanrfoley]

Scott, thanks for the impressions...

I'm not too worried about the hit influence (there's a slider for that), but some of the fielding bugs you mention are a bit disconcerting. I haven't experienced those problems in the demo -- so I hope it was just one, freak game.

[~Guru~]

I just got my delivery of mlb 2k9 for 360 and the show...

bout to play both right now...