Glaring bugs destroy a potentially great game
General:
- Sliders are completely and utterly useless. I'm guessing they are just there for show.
- No auto-manage button when setting line-ups or rotations (if there is, I couldn't find it).
- Full motion swing control is flaky and inconsistent. How can any baseball game screw this up? Too often the pitch location and swing level provide a result that will leave you scratching your head. For example, an even swing over the middle of the plate on a ball slightly up and I get a ground ball - no that is some lazy physics. Way too many examples of this. I always check the location after a hit and more often than not the resulting hit does not add up. Timing is obviously a big part of it; however, location is fairly important as well and this game does a laughable job in this area.
-Pitching is too inconsistent. I can have Peavy throw a fastball on the corner, hit the tiny white line perfectly in the pitch meter and the ball still goes a foot outside. This is poorly done. If the computer is going to decide where the pitch goes regardless of my input, then get rid of the pitch meter.
Base running in this game is w/o a doubt the worst I've ever played on any baseball game. The developer(s) responsible for this part of the game should be flogged, tarred and feathered.
Franchise:
- Manager Hiring and Firing can only be done at the end of the season. Also, some managers can't be fired permanently; instead they keep reappearing and prevent you from hiring a replacement.
- Minors Director can't even be found during the season.
- Player progression is unintuitive and ineffective. Unless I spend hours and hours micro-managing this, ALL OF MY PLAYERS LOSE SKILLS throughout the season. When I do micromanage, the gains are minimal to nil. A players potential appears to have no affect on progression.
- No feedback when a FA considers another contract. Yes you can review all offers to a player, but you can go from best offer to the player signing with another team w/o any feedback. This is just not realistic at all.
- The trade AI is just silly, but I can live with that since I chose not to steal players (most of the time anyway).
RTTS:
- The goals that they give to players are sort of funny. No one that is a fan of the sport would consider half of the goals realistically attainable. Don't get me wrong, I can meet the goals, they just are nonsensical if you what any sense of realism. Basically, as a rookie and platooning with a veteran player, you need to put up MVP numbers to stay in the majors. Have the designers of this game ever followed a full season of baseball before?
- The infamous September crash that has not been fixed two months after the game's release. They came up with a work around that is just not acceptable.
This game is not even on par with the MVP franchise of old, much less classics like High Heat. MLB 2K5 and its predecessors make this game look silly. The fact that this is by far the best baseball game available this year speaks volumes about exclusive licenses.