Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

I am an avid baseball fan, especially of the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles, so since i enjoyed somewhat of MLB 2K8 I decided to get their latest installment which hopefully fixed some of the technical bugs from the last game. After playing the demo, I found it intriguing but was very dissapointed in the presentation. 2K litterally made the players look more cartoony instead of realistic models like in 2K8, which overall visual presentation was fantastic. Not too mention the lack of authenticity in the game. The uniform combinations are still not addressed properly and correctly, the colors of the jerseys look "whacked", and the caps look like plastic drawings. Another thing 2k fails to capture is the environment of a baseball game. The crowd, although it does look alot better compared to the previous game, still lacks emotion and authenticity. One suggestion I would personally make is adding vendors in the stands and making crowd models that are of different age, or at least appear so, with different sizes and models of people in the crowd. Make the crowd look MORE realistic and not just fillers in a background. That, I believe, is the only way to bring the game of baseball to life in MLB 2K sports. And now where the damage is at its worst, the actuall gameplay and controls. 2K changed the control too much that they are nothing like 2K8. They've changed the controls to sliding and baserunning all together which will make it rather frusturating. Also the glitches in the field are quite unbearable. A ground ball will make its way to the shortstop, and once the shortstop throws the ball to the first baseman, the first baseman takes his foot off is completely off the bag. And once a high fly is hit into the outfeild, fielders have a tendencies to get their glove up to catch the ball a tad late which causes the ball to fall right next to them and can sometimes head to the back wall. Another thing that bothers me is the default camera angle for the pitcher. Although you can change it to your desired settings its nothing like the pitchers camera in 2K8 and it doesn't save the setting for every game, which is rather annoying and it tends to shift depending on the pitcher, whether he'd be a left hander or right. And for a small positive, the actual play by play by Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips is rather enjoyable and the no stictchin technology as demonstrated as an oustanding feature by 2K sports is an improvement in overall voice acting, however Thorne does not "no stich" everything he says, he still manages to sound like a robot for certain player names. Aggrevating glitches and lack of real authenticity like 2K sports promised doesn't make this game worthy of a pickup unless you can't afford a PS3 for THE SHOW09. Maybe 2K should've focused more on the gameplay instead of Tim Lincecum and signature styles.