Could have been a great game and was disappionting because it had so much potential, but you still have to tip your cap.
*Gameplay: In one word: "shotty". Bad baserunning thats hard to controll. Its seems like you have guys flying all over the place and you'll grow to hate the turbo running, which can be turned off, because a player should be running his hardest all the time. Fielding is another area that needed work but was mainly due to the poor camera angles, I much perfered the camera view in MVP baseball and in this game theres not much you can do about it. It always seems like the ball gets to the infield from the oufield alot faster than you think it would, that may also be inpart to the camera angle. If the game could improve greatly apon these areas and polishing the unfluid movement of fielders chasing after a ball then this game would be a heck of alot better.
You may now be asking: Is there anything good about the game play? To answer your question yes. The hitting is new and innovative because you can incorperate a trigger step, and if you dont like that you can always go back to classic control like in MVP baseball. Pitching, ooo man pitching is a bright point in this one. Fatigue, situation (aka. if its a high stakes game) and composure all effect how you pitch and how well. Some days your slider will break 17 inches other days it'll move 23 inches, 23! You will also notice there are strike out pitchers and not-so strike out pitchers and this also plays a part in performance because they did a nice job seperating the two. With pitching; arrows will show you the directing of the break, how well that pitcher throws it and what pitches that piticular batter is good at hitting against. You can also see his batting average verse the count, batting average verse pitch, and batting average verse count and type of pitch, etc. Thats also why this game is so great strategically because you can plan the hitter better. O yea forgot to mention you can also see his batting average for each spot of the strike zone (ex: bottom right corner- batting average = .196 hmm its also in a blue square maybe I should throw it there. Look at that: I can also see he chases pitches outside the zone 45% of the time. those type of things.) The other nice tweek is runner mode which lets you be the runner. Youll notice a different camera angle and you can select your lead off, when to go on a steal(if you decide to), how to slide, and give batting commands.
*Sound: Well the same song playing in the menu gets old and I mean real old which is why I didnt give it a high rating. I love the announcers in this game, Joe Morgan is my favorite color commentator in real life so naturally...(also hellof a ballplayer). They include stuff like they do on espn such as the fan mail question of the day. Which you can learn some stuff you may not have thought about. One thing thats a problem is the PA announcer who mis pronounces some names, for example he calls Jorge...George...ye.
*Graphics: Im not gonna go to deep but just say not nearly as good as MVP and they needed to fix some unfluid movements.
*Other things: World baseball Classic is in the game not much you can do with it though jst pretty much play it. The skybox feature is cool, it allows you look at your stats aswell as player & team trophies and retired jerseys from franchise mode. Which brings me to my next subject: Franchise mode in which you get to be a GM of a team. Your ability to meet goals that are set my the owner and the over team perfomance along with profit ultimitly affect your job security with the team. Along with that you can buy scouting reports with money the owner gives you so you can get a real real good look at ur opponet. All the strategy I mentioned before make franchise mode very solid, Infact there really arent a whole of issues with it at all. Franchise mode= 9/10 score.
*Outlook: This game was a prototype mainly because it set the bar for in-depth look (inside edge). Unfortunitly it lacked in game play. If those low points that I mentioned were fixed then look out. A complex, well organized, fun gameplay and graphically tunned game is closest thing to the real game as you'll get. I will definitly tip my cap to MLB 2K6 for venturing into uncharted land in the world of video games. Though it may not have been as solid as i wanted to be its still a success because it setup sports games to come in the future.
Final Note: You may notice mistakes with spelling, sentence structure, things like that, this is due to me writing this at like 2am and I was pretty tired when I wrote this. Your all smart people so you get the idea of what Im writing. Thanks, Chris