Easily the best baseball game I have ever played. And I have played a lot.
User Rating: 10 | MVP Baseball 2005 PS2
MVP Baseball 2005 has it all! This game is ridiculous in how real it is. First I will start off with the different game modes it contains. First off it has a Play Now mode, which gets you in to a game, any game, as fast as possible. It also has an Exhibition mode, which is just a glorified Play Now mode. The mode that I mostly played is called Dynasty Mode and it is what has replaced what normally would be there as a "season" mode. In Dynasty you pick your team and set off on a regular season grind in order to try and win the World Series. The main difference is that unlike a regular season modes, Dynasty lets you control your team for up to like 10 or 20 years or something silly like that, so you can keep playing consecutive seasons with your team. It is also a little more complicated than simply playing baseball games. Along the way you have to worry about the salary cap and players demanding new contracts, injured players, managing the talent you have on you're A, AA & AAA farm teams, and a whole lot more! This mode, needless to say, is very addictive. The next mode in the game is Owner Mode. This is basically, I believe, the same as Dynasty Mode except that it goes even more in depth. You are not only controlling what goes on with your team and it's players, but you can create a ballpark, set merchandising prices, decide on ballpark giveaways, etc. I haven't tried this mode out yet, but I believe it could be even more enthralling than Dynasty Mode! Next is MVP Online, the online mode of the game. I don't play online so I have nothing to say about this. Next is the Mini Games mode, and it is a lot of fun. There are three mini games you can play. In the Batting mini game you choose your batter and then you are given 10 pitches per round. With each pitch you are told where they roughly want you to hit the ball and if you do, you earn points to help you make it through to the next round. Hitting obstacles and ramps earn you bonus points, but hitting foul balls takes away points. This mini game I found was easily the best and most addictive. The next mini game is the Pitching mini game. In it you have to throw the ball at coloured targets above home plate. Each colour corresponds to a certain pitch the pitcher can throw. It's kind of like Tetris where you hit certain targets and they disappear, then new ones come down the take their place. It's like the batting mini game where you have to earn a certain amount of points to make it to the next round. This mini game has a time limit on it, it's a real pressure cooker! The last mini game is the Untimed Pitching mini game. It is the exact same as the pitching mini game I just mentioned only, you guessed it, there is no time limit. I liked the theory of the pitching mini games but for some reason I just couldn't get the hang of them and gave up on them pretty quickly. I like to smash the ball not throw it! The next game mode is the Homerun Showdown Mode. This, along with the batting mini game, is one of my favourite extras in the game. In this mode you pick a batter and also an opposing batter. You then go splitscreen against each other and the first one to hit their balls a predetermined distance (the maximum is 1 mile, what I normally choose) wins! You get bonus points for hitting home runs. Lots of fun! Last up is the Manager Mode. I didn't try it because I think all you do is watch the game and manage it, you don't even play! Kind of goofy but hey, I guess everybody has their own "thing". In MVP Baseball 2005 you set up a profile when you first fire it up and you can earn MVP Points to this profile. You can earn them in a number of ways. You can earn points by beating certain batters in the Homerun Showdown, by making the high score list on the batting and pitching mini games, and by completing certain tasks during actual games in all the different game modes. If you accomplish things like hit 2 home runs with one batter, hit a grand slam, steal home, pitch a complete game, pitch a shutout, etc., all these predetermined tasks earn you various amounts of MVP Points. Plus, the harder the level you play on, the more points you earn for any one task. What can you do with the points, you ask? Good question. There are a number of unlockables to be had in this game, almost too many really! I believe there are 119 retro jerseys, 15 classic stadiums, 63 legendary players & 2 classic teams to unlock. It's a lot or work, trust me. As for the game itself, it is quite different from baseball games of the past, especially in the controls department. The graphics are really good, the players are smooth, a lot of them actually even look like themselves! Fielding and batting are very intuitive and rely mostly on the analog paddles on the joystick as opposed to the more traditional control pad. The one thing I struggled with at first was the throwing in the field and the baserunning. Instead of pressing the control pad in the direction of which base you want and then pressing one button (usually X), each base is assigned a button. It is laid out like the baseball diamond: x is home, circle is first base, triangle is second base & square is third base. When you field a ball all you have to do is press the button to which base you want the throw to go to. It's a quick learning curve and it makes turning double plays sweeter than apple pie. What I struggled with most was the baserunning. It works the same as the throwing. Each base is assigned a button, as I mentioned above. So, you can press L1 to advance all runners on base, or R1 to retreat all runners on base. However, if you've got 2 or 3 guys on and you want to advance only the lead runner, you have to press the appropriate button to take control of the runner who is on that base and tell him where to go. It makes sense but boy does it take a lot of getting used to! It's just such a departure from past games that it's hard to make routine. I got really good at it in the end but let's just say I got picked off a lot more than I should have in the beginning! One other thing that is amazing about this game is that it has a lot of the A, AA & AAA teams for each of the MLB teams. So even though you are stuck with the outdated 2005 rosters, a lot of the young players that have come to the forefront in the last couple years can be found and called up from these minor league teams! Anyways, that's all I've got to say about this game. If you are a baseball fan, or even just a fan of sports games in general, this is a must have as it is the best baseball game I have ever played. There are so many game modes and mini games in it, along with all of the unclockables, that the replayability factor for this game is very high. That to me is an important upside to any game.
