While a good game, ESPN Major League Baseball takes a giant step backwards with this installment.

User Rating: 7 | ESPN Major League Baseball XBOX
As with the other 2004 editions of 2K Sports' sports simulations, ESPN Major League Baseball gets a new name with the ESPN branding, following ESPN NBA Basketball and ESPN NHL Hockey. Previous installments of the series, under the World Series Baseball title, held its own as the best baseball game each year, as EA Sports' Triple Play series had increasingly lost touch with realism. However, when compared to last year's excellent World Series Baseball 2K3 and EA Sports' retooled MVP Baseball 2003, ESPN Major League Baseball has taken a step with this year's installment.

Game modes include the usual franchise, season, playoffs, and exhibition. A couple of extra modes include Gamecast, Duel, and Situation. Gamecast is a simulation of a game with the Gamecast interface seen on ESPN.com. Duel is a minigame like in which a team of two players compete for points while pitching and hitting. Situation allows you to create a custom scenario, for example, top of the sixth, man on 1st, two outs, and play from that point.

There are some things that ESPN Major League Baseball does right. For the most part, the graphics are sharp. The stadiums are beautifully and accurately detailed and are a joy to look at. Ballpark specific elements such as the apple at Shea, birds at Turner Field, cars in the background at Great American, and the train at Minute Maid Park add to the atmosphere of the different ballparks. The crowds are a welcome departure from cardboard cutouts found in other sports games. It's too bad the scoreboards are static, and don't reflect what's actually happening during the game.

As the title implies, game overlays are ESPN branded to capture the look of an actual ESPN broadcast. The ticker at the bottom of the screen that displays scores from other games around the league and K-Zone after a strikeout both add to the authenticity. The commentary is excellent with Jon Miller and Rex Hudler doing the play by play, and strikingly resembles an actual ESPN broadcast. You'll be impressed time and time again with the spot on and appropriate commentary in context of the game. For example, in the pre-game screens before playoff games, it seems like just about every conceivable situation is covered appropriately. The hecklers are back again this year with player specific taunts, such as for the Mets' Karim Garcia, "Hey Karim, how's the hook shot?"

In addition to the usual standings, league leaders, statistics, news around the league, readers of ESPN.com will recognize ESPN.com's Power Alley rankings implemented in the game. The game also introduces confidence for all players. A player's confidence will change during the game, and supposedly affects his performance. For example, a batter may gain confidence after a big hit, or a pitcher will lose confidence after surrendering a home run.

Batting is the most enjoyable part of the gameplay. The default batting mode does away with the batting cursor in last year's game, although this is still an option. Power and contact swings are still mapped to different buttons, and batting has been simplified to timing and looking for a hittable pitch.

Pitching can be horrific. There's no rhyme or reason to your pitcher's control. It's all too easy to miss the strike zone when you're trying to throw a strike, yet you don't want to throw anything down the middle, as CPU home runs happen frequently. Why your pitcher will completely miss with one pitch yet hit his spots with the next is a complete mystery, but the newly introduced effort meter doesn't seem to have an effect on that. As is standard with baseball games nowadays, each batter's strike zone is broken down into hot and cold zones, but due to the control issues, painting the corners is difficult, and pitchers tire too easily, so you don't want to waste too many pitches. Also, MVP Baseball 2003's innovative pitching implementation made previous baseball games' methods seem archaic, and ESPN Major League Baseball's pitching model does seem dated, even with the addition of the effort meter.

Fielding is a nightmare. First, the game doesn't always select the best fielder for you to make a play, usually on pop ups and fly balls, leaving you to either run more than necessary, or fiddle with the switch fielder button and hope it cycles to a better choice. However, I wish that was the worst of it. Fielding errors happen in ESPN Major League Baseball more often than in any other baseball game ever. Way too often the middle infielders will botch a routine ground ball completely. Fine, but what's even more ridiculous is that even if they field the ball cleanly, often the throw to first base will pull the first baseman off the bag. It's not a good thing that each time my shortshop fields the ball, I do not have full confidence that he'll make the throw to first successfully. Also, another annoying thing about fielding is the slow animations prevent you from making plays that should have been made. For example, during double play situations, if the second baseman has to dive for a ground ball, it's unlikely that the relay throw to first will be in time.

There are a handful of bugs and annoyances that stand out and ultimately detract from the enjoyment of the game. The first oddity you'll notice is that unlike in real life, batters don't run out plays to first if the play is not close. They'll mysteriously stop in their tracks once they are out. There is a trick that you can play with the infield fly rule logic. While the game will detect infield fly rule situations and call the batter out, if you intentionally let the ball drop, the lead runner will try to advance, usually leading to an easy out. There is also a strange inability to perform a double switch if you've pinch hit for your pitcher. The game will only allow you to double switch once you are bringing in a pitcher, not after an inning is over in which you've pinch hit for the pitcher. And there is another bug I noticed when bringing in a reliever, he will assume the previous pitcher's fatigue, which renders your reliever useless. Another gripe I have is that runners are slow compared to fielder throws. Runners have a hard time scoring from second on a single, or from first on a double, and stolen bases are rare. You'll also encounter numerous instances of the AI making awful decisions, such as throwing to bases with no chance at getting the runner, and base running mistakes such as stopping and starting again after rounding bases.

It's too bad the player graphics don't match the quality of the stadiums. While the player models are decent, the same can't be said about the player faces in game. The player faces look outdated, aren't animated, and hardly resemble their real life counterparts. They are nowhere near as nice as MVP Baseball's player faces. In fact, the number of faces that are actually modeled is appallingly small, and because of this, many players share the same generic face, which you will become familiar with if you play the game at any length.

While ESPN Major League Baseball does have its moments, its frustrating elements will creep up time and time again. Overall, the game feels unfinished and rushed out the door. The bar for baseball game excellence has been set by EA Sports' MVP Baseball 2003, and unfortunately, ESPN Major League Baseball takes a huge step back.