Major League Baseball 2K10 Review

[RaychelSnr]

It's hard to believe that it has been 10 years since I bought World Series Baseball, the game that practically sold me on the Xbox. Features like controlling the managerial staff and a truncated minor-league system made Sega's early effort a standout (ignoring those Dreamcast versions).

Since then, the WSB/2K baseball games have made their slow descent into mediocrity, managing to outlast other titles that did not make it out of the "golden age" of console hardball. Then the 2K exclusive license effectively killed superior titles, including MVP and All-Star Baseball. And, after the dust settled, MLB 2K itself became every critic's punchline.

When taking everything into account, MLB 2K9 was the worst game in the series to date (sans pre-patch MLB 2K6). It concluded the downward spiral for a series that had been to the top of the mountain during the last generation, fallen on its face, made big promises when the "next-gen" era started, then failed to deliver. In a decade, this series went from selling consoles to rumors of it causing 2K's impending demise.

But MLB 2K10 has been talked about as the make-or-break year for the franchise. So with that in mind, has this year's version done enough to resuscitate the MLB 2K line? Well, it's still not a reason to buy an Xbox 360, but it is certainly worth purchasing if you already own one. More importantly, if you gave up on MLB 2K a long time ago (as I had), 2K10 is certainly deserving of a look.

Read More - Major League Baseball 2K10 Review

[boomhauertjs]

Is there going to be a separate PC review?

[jeffy777]

Very fair review. It's nice to finally see a "good" rating in the MLB 2K series. I hope 2K/VC will actually build upon the good things in this game so that next year will be not just a good game, but a great game.

[StormJH1]

Very nicely done review. I'm interested more in the review content than the final score, though I do think 7.5, or perhaps somewhere between 7.5 to 8.0 does seem fair for this title.

I think you really nailed home the fielding issues and how the biggest change from last year to this year is that at least it "works" by and large in 2k10. You won't see routine flyballs dropping behind outfielders, and if a groundball is hit to an infielder, there probably won't be any freak occurance that results in it not being an out.

But the way that they "fixed" so much of that in one year, as you said, was that it's basically an automated process where you're not controlling much of anything. A good analogy for 2k10's fielding would be to an action RPG (like KOTOR) where you "control" the movement of the characters somewhat, but your only real role is to make decisions for them on what they do. About half of the time a groundball or flyball is hit near a fielder, the CPU takes over and not only does it for you, but won't let you do anything else. Once the ball is caught, you decide where to throw, etc., but the action is so quick and automated, that it's basically been programmed to "stay out of the way" of the rest of the game by not causing any major problems.

In future iterations of this game, I want them to take a serious look at the scaling of the players in terms of player size vs. field size, and their realistic abilities. The 2k10 infield looks and plays almost like a softball field. The first time you hit a groundball in The Show, by comparison, you'd get a sense of a much bigger field where there's actually room for a ball to get through.

While I'm glad that the fielding works (and I am enjoying the game overall), the abilities of the players on defense are almost irrelevant b/c you don't do very much in the field. As for there not being many errors, I expect we'll see that in the future, but after seeing an "error" every other play in 2k9, I think they made a conscious decision to tone purposeful errors way the heck down or eliminate them altogether, so as not to give the impression that their game was "broken" again.

[jeffy777]

Quote: Originally Posted by boomhauertjs

Is there going to be a separate PC review?

I doubt it, since the only thing that's really different is the graphics are better on PC.

[acarrero]

Good review. I would rate it higher than 7.5 though. How is Madden, for example, so much better? The presentation is 10x better in this game, and even the crowds and stadiums are better. The fielding is the worst part of this game, but everything else is solid to great and it plays as good a game of baseball as Madden does of football.

[econoodle]

good lord caley was that a fantastic review.

7.5 is on point,
this game will AVERAGE a 75 oveall this year, as it should.

agree totally on the walks
its refreshing to actually get them consistently this year

fielding
gag. lol

[rudyjuly2]

Quote: Originally Posted by StormJH1

Very nicely done review. I'm interested more in the review content than the final score, though I do think 7.5, or perhaps somewhere between 7.5 to 8.0 does seem fair for this title. I think you really nailed home the fielding issues and how the biggest change from last year to this year is that at least it "works" by and large in 2k10. You won't see routine flyballs dropping behind outfielders, and if a groundball is hit to an infielder, there probably won't be any freak occurance that results in it not being an out. But the way that they "fixed" so much of that in one year, as you said, was that it's basically an automated process where you're not controlling much of anything. A good analogy for 2k10's fielding would be to an action RPG (like KOTOR) where you "control" the movement of the characters somewhat, but your only real role is to make decisions for them on what they do. About half of the time a groundball or flyball is hit near a fielder, the CPU takes over and not only does it for you, but won't let you do anything else. Once the ball is caught, you decide where to throw, etc., but the action is so quick and automated, that it's basically been programmed to "stay out of the way" of the rest of the game by not causing any major problems. In future iterations of this game, I want them to take a serious look at the scaling of the players in terms of player size vs. field size, and their realistic abilities. The 2k10 infield looks and plays almost like a softball field. The first time you hit a groundball in The Show, by comparison, you'd get a sense of a much bigger field where there's actually room for a ball to get through. While I'm glad that the fielding works (and I am enjoying the game overall), the abilities of the players on defense are almost irrelevant b/c you don't do very much in the field. As for there not being many errors, I expect we'll see that in the future, but after seeing an "error" every other play in 2k9, I think they made a conscious decision to tone purposeful errors way the heck down or eliminate them altogether, so as not to give the impression that their game was "broken" again.

I agree with almost everything you said.

Too bad I can't read the full review because the link provided is only for operationsports.com and not osatwork.com for some of us. Anyway someone could post the entire review in this thread and not just the introduction with a link I can't read?