989 Sports has been hard at work preparing the next installment of their MLB series with MLB 2005, which they hope will offer just about anything and everything a baseball fan could want. To prove this, the development team is going so far as to include 11 modes of play, including an online component and the ability to put your face in the game by using Sony's EyeToy. While the version of MLB 2005 we played was supposed to have been early--aside from some bug fixes that needed to be taken care of--the game looked as though it's on its way to becoming a solid baseball offering for the PlayStation 2.

MLB 2005 has a complex franchise mode that lets you manage your team's business.

When we visited the developers at 989 Sports, it was easy to see that each and every person was not only passionate about the work put into MLB 2005 but each simply wanted to make the absolute best baseball game possible. As evidence, the team showed us the improvements they've made to MLB 2005 over its predecessor MLB 2004, which was released nearly a year ago. Included in the game this year are several modes of play, including career, franchise, simulation, online, and historical all-time greats.

The franchise mode in MLB 2005 is basically an entirely separate game of fantasy baseball that allows you to manage ticket prices, put in a new field, and even decide between taking a bus or a plane to the next away game. If you've played the franchise mode in Madden 2004, you have a good idea of what the franchise mode in MLB 2005 will look like. If you missed Madden 2004, here's an example of its depth (and the depth you'll find in MLB 2004). You are charge of so many aspects of your team that you can actually change everything from personnel to the price of a hot dog at the stadium. However, the one major difference between the two games' franchise modes is that in MLB 2005, you don't actually control the players. Instead, you call the shots like a manager during an actual game. The view you see on the screen during play resembles the live game tracker you'd see when following a broadcast on a sports Web site. This means that a virtual diamond is displayed from an overhead view, and dots are used to represent the location of base runners. The rest of the screen is filled with all kinds of information, including tons of stats and data concerning who's on deck. When you're not in the middle of a game, you have a ton of responsibilities in franchise mode that includes setting up advertising campaigns and promotional nights and even securing better television deals based on your team's performance. When we asked the developers of MLB 2005 why they would make such a robust mode that didn't include hands-on gameplay, they cited PS2 memory constraints as the sole reason.

While the ability to get your hands dirty in franchise mode might not be available, MLB 2005 has plenty of other playable modes, such as a career one that aims to give you the experience of having a career as a player in the majors. You'll have to earn a spot by going through the game's spring training mode and by making sure you perform well enough to make the cut. Even if you do happen to make a team, you'll still have to make sure to meet each of the 10 performance goals you're given at the beginning of the season. If you don't keep your performance up, you might get traded or released.

The career mode lets you get down and dirty by taking your player up through the ranks.

Beyond franchise and career modes, MLB 2005 includes your typical exhibition, season, versus, and online modes. The latter mode wasn't up-and-running when we got our chance to check out the game, but it's said to feature all of the online tournament and statistical categories as other 989 Sports games, like NFL GameDay.

One of the interesting features MLB 2005 will include is the ability to use the EyeToy peripheral as a digital camera so that you can create a player who features your very own face. We got a chance to see a demonstration of the EyeToy feature in action, and it worked surprisingly well. The EyeToy interface, as built into MLB 2005, makes it convenient to tweak the picture so that it fits the player model correctly. The USB headset for the PlayStation 2 is also supported, which will allow chatter between online players as well as provide the ability for a single player to issue commands during the game, like ordering an outfield shift.