MLB 2K9

Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Sports
Rating: E (Everyone)
Price: $59.99

By RTEGonline

There’s always been this ongoing battle about which developer “gets it” or has the knack to take a genre, run with it and improve on it year after year. Most forget that the main goal should be to keep the fans, of that genre, happy. 2KSports has somewhat understood this dynamic and it’s why fans can usually count on them to bring a quality game, no matter what genre it is… except for this year.

Surprisingly, MLB 2k9 came out of the box with a host of minor glitches and annoyances that were too relevant to ignore. I get the feeling that 2KSports developers wanted to woo players with over-the-top animations and gimmicks (again) to take our attention away from what’s really wrong with this game. MLB2K9 appears to lack some much needed personality this year and I can’t really figure out why or how it was released with so many issues and missing pieces. This is very uncharacteristic of 2KSports and I’m left wondering if there are bigger reasons why.

The Skinny:
If you’re a first time player of the MLB 2K franchise, you may find yourself becoming increasingly frustrated with learning how to play this release. And, don’t expect any help from the 5-page user manual that’s included for $65 of your hard earned money. There’s far too much that is new with this year’s engine to not explain it a little more to players. The Hitting and Pitching controls, which fully utilize the thumb sticks, will take some time to get use to, but after 2 days of solid playing, I’ve learned to appreciate it a lot more. It is, however, not without its bugs though.

A most notable change for me is the play-by-play team and the big move away from Jon Miller and Hall of Fame analyst Joe Morgan. Personally, I don’t like this move, but, I understand the reasoning. Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips are okay, but, seriously lack the chemistry that Jon and Joe have genuinely built over the past 20 years of working together. And, and it shows. As usual, the timing of some of the comments is out of place, but, Steve Phillips far out-shines Thorne with his knowledge of the game. Living Rosters is a nice feature that’s included in this year... it utilizes your Xbox LIVE account to keep your game up to date with the current roster changes, trades, injuries and such that are taking place in real-life in Major League Baseball. However, if you’re playing in Franchise Mode, this feature is useless because you’ll need to restart your Franchise in order to utilize the updates (No news on whether this will be fixed with the next patch or not).

Player AI is terribly glitchy and outfielders disappear through walls for a few seconds and re-appear like nothing ever happened (sans the ball in their glove, of course). The game is very easy on the eyes when played in HD and that alone got me to at least give it a full go. (That and the fact that I don’t have a choice because there’s no other baseball game for the Xbox 360). 2K did do an excellent job rendering the stadiums and plate approaches/batting stances of some of today’s best players. It’s just too bad that they didn’t put the same amount of work into their faces. 90% of the stars look nothing like they’re real-life counterparts and that’s really a shame. Manny Ramirez (my favorite all-time hitter), looks like a sleazy third-world cocaine dealer and nothing about him is rendered remotely close to life-like… including his sweaty, greasy looking skin. If you like dust flying all over the place every time players move across the infield, you won’t be disappointed. There’s enough dirty flying around in MLB 2K9 to make a gossip column jealous. The Homerun Derby is nothing special, Practice Mode is a definitely plus and there is no World Baseball Classic this year. (Boooo!) Don’t waste your time using Create a Player because there will be nothing really unique about your player, this time around.

The Bottom Line:
My gripes with MLB2k9 are few, but, the ones that I do have are shared with other pure fans of the greatest game ever played. Throw in the fact that the game is produced every year under an exclusive licensing deal between MLB and 2KSports, and you can see why Xbox owner really have no other choice except MLB 2K9. I’ve heard rumblings that there’s another game on a different console that gives MLB2K9 a run, but, we’ll never know until Sony decides to send it to us to review.