One of the best baseball games I've played.
Graphics: 10
Sound: 7
Value: 10
Tilt: 8
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MLB 09 is one of the most polished baseball games I've ever played. The first thing you'll notice are the stunning graphics, fabric of the uniforms that move with the player, and people walking up and down the aisles in the crowd.
The next thing you'll notice is that you probably are not going to go undefeated in franchise mode like you would in other baseball games. MLB 09 requires some baseball I.Q. in order to survive, you cannot hang a curveball or changeup up and over the plate without the batter taking advantage of it, you really need to know where to place your pitches. Having said that, you could change the difficulty by adjusting difficulty sliders like you would find in most sports games.
The default difficulty is fine except you may want to adjust your pitching accuracy. MLB 09 is a simulation baseball game, meaning that your pitcher will be off his mark from time to time, but i feel missing your mark every other pitch is a tad annoying, you may execute a great pitch in a great location but winds up 10 feet off the plate.
All the game modes you would expect are there except pitching practice, and to me this is most necessary for this game, why they would have batting practice and no pitching practice is beyond me.
There are some difficulties playing online however. During peak hours its very difficult to play, your swings will not be timed with the pitches, your batter will jerk and lag, and with the lag you can forget about check swinging. During off hours its much better but i still experience some jerky batters which has turned me off online play altogether.
Besides that, this game is worth the money, one of the best I've played.