"Major League Baseball 2K10" was a pretty good game of baseball, and even if it didn't match up to "MLB 10: The Show," it was still a decent alternative for Xbox gamers who couldn't play on Sony's baseball diamond. I remember, though, that with "MLB 11: The Show," SCE San Diego Studio added a bunch of new features that got me excited at the time, with analog controls, co-op gameplay, 3D mode (weird as it was, I was a kid who really liked 3D), camera angles specifically based on the 30 baseball stadiums, PlayStation Move support, it had a lot! And with that, the pressure was on "Major League Baseball 2K11" to up the ante from its 2010 version and really stand out. So what did 2K do to sell me on the game? Well...they appealed to the Phillies fan in me by putting one of my favorite pitchers in Roy Halladay (R.I.P.) on the front cover! Yeah, that's about it.
Don't get it twisted, "Major League Baseball 2K11" is still fun to play. It retains the solid gameplay of 2010's entry with good controls, a nice blend of modes, and a visual style that, while not anywhere close to the realism of "MLB 11: The Show," was still pretty decent on its own. It was also cool that the game offered a sort of dynamic player rating system that allowed the ratings of players within the game to be increased or decreased depending on how a player performed in real life. It's a minor thing, but it adds a cool dynamic to the game that's just interesting to see.
Unfortunately, the big problem that holds "Major League Baseball 2K11" back for me is that, for all intents and purposes, this game is very similar to 2010's entry. Yes, it's still a fundamentally solid baseball game, but there's not really all that much in the way of meaningful changes to make it worth giving up "Major League Baseball 2K10" for. And in this case, that's a lot more disappointing, given that "MLB 11: The Show" made so many big changes that worked well for it. By staying the same and not doing too much differently, "Major League Baseball 2K11" looks puny in comparison to its PlayStation counterpart.
Overall, "Major League Baseball 2K11" is a solid game, but definitely not one of the most essential in the series. The new features are minuscule and don't affect the gameplay too much, and there's not much of a reason to have chosen this over "MLB 11: The Show." It has its fun moments, but there's definitely this feeling the game could've benefitted from some more noteworthy changes.
Final rating: 6 out of 10 "Decent"