MLB 2K6 is great for baseball fans willing to look past its obvious shortcomings.

User Rating: 8 | Major League Baseball 2K6 X360
The MLB 2K games are and will be the only third-party MLB baseball game for awhile. And honestly, I'm perfectly O.K. with that. While I fondly remember (MLB) MVP, This game is loads of fun and pretty realistic.

Gameplay is a very mixed bag. I'll start with the excellent pitching system. You aim the pitch, then you hold the corresponding pitch button down while a circle expands. This circle represents the effectiveness of the pitch (more effective pitches take more pitcher stamina). You then release the button as the circle shrinks. Tap the button again when the circle is tight around the ball for the most accuracy. It's cool and realistic how on breaking ball, the cursor determines where the ball breaks, not where it ends up, so if you aim a slider on the inside corner of the strike zone, it will break towards the batter and jam him or maybe even hit him.

Now there's batting. With the left stick, you aim an invisible circle at where you think the pitch will be. The size of this circle is determined by the batters plate discipline. If you guess right, or if the pitchers makes a bad pitch, another cursor will show the location of the ball. To swing, pull back on the right stick to "step" and release for a contact swing or push forward for a power swing. You can also push the stick sorta sideways to pull or push the ball. To bunt, simply push the right stick forwards. Unfortunately, bunting is pretty hard, contrary to the rest of the game. It may take a while to get used to the delicate timing of the swing stick.

Gone are the days of gently hitting the analog stick and having your player sprint away and dropping the ball, but fielding in 2K6 brings in a whole new slew of problems. Now, players have too much weight and making small adjustments is hard once again. Diving is unresponsive, you'll get stuck in slow animations, and making wall catches is incredibly easy. It tells you when and all you do is hit up on the right analog stick and the guy will jump higher than he ever will in his life and he'll catch it EVERY time. I'd like to add that the bases were loaded and it was an easy ball to the pitcher and he jerked and a run scored.

Baserunning is troublesome, but to a different degree. You actually button mash to make a guy sprint. At first it may sound crazy but I like it. It's exciting and trying to beat out hits is edge-of-your-seat fun. However, when there's multiple guys on base, things get ugly. Only one guy can sprint at a time, and they aren't smart enough to figure out that they should have ran home.

Speaking of ugly, the visuals aren't very good. The cloth physics aren't the problem, it's the puffy uniforms. Animations are funky, and the game looks a little too much like a beefed upped Xbox game than a full fledged 360 title. Even on HD there are way too many jaggies for comfort. The details are often hidden, like the dirt, uniform, and grass detail. There are good things, such as the dirt on the uniforms and dirt clouds, but nothing to show off to your rabid Sony fanboy friend (why are they your friend anyway? Fanboys stink, especially Sony ones.). It is cool to see concession guys and fans going for foul balls. Contrary to IGN/GS (I don't remember which), only the first deck of fans are 3D. Then it's back to the same ol' paper dudes.

Miller and Morgan do an awesome job, just like the rest of the sound.

There are a bunch of game modes including franchise, GM career, and World Baseball classic to keep you hooked for a long time with this game. Online is solid as well.

So if you're a die-hard hardball fan, go ahead and pick this up. If you don't like baseball there isn't much to suck you in. The bad rep for this game I think is all because MVP is gone and 2K lost the ESPN license. It's better than 2K5, but isn't really next-gen. Will it blow you away with it's next-gen baseball? No. Will it entertain you for hours on end with its (mostly) solid gameplay and richness of features? Yes.

P.S. I'm very lucky not to have had any freezing problems, like others have had happen to them