This year in baseball titles: Steak vs. not poop like last year

Given the current state of video game production contracts, most of us are locked into one sports game or another. Sure, there's the small handful of lucky bastards who have a shiny new Playstation 3 sitting in the cabinet next to an Xbox 360, but most of us make a decision early on and live with whatever comes our way.

(For the short story on background, 2K Sports has the contract for Major League Baseball, like EA has for the NFL with its Madden series. If the console manufacturer decides to produce a game solely for their console, they're allowed. Hence, the standard bearer for MLB games - MLB The Show - is made by Sony for Sony and is not allowed to be sold for the Xbox or Wii.)

The two releases this year are the above mentioned MLB: The Show (PS3)and MLB 2K10 (All platforms). Last year was a total write off for 2K after they re-assigned the title internally, cut their production cycle short and generally pissed off everyone who bought a copy of the game. Personally, I never touched the thing - I saw the awful, awful reviews and steered clear - but much of this year's marketing centered around members of the development teams telling the various blogs that they had embraced the suck that was last year and that they swore they'd never do it again.

Also, that they'd be giving away a million bucks for the first verified perfect game pitched in 2K10.

Here are the reviews for the games (both from Kotaku):
The Show
2K10

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the respective arcs of the two games. The Show continues to set the pace, while 2K10 (which owns the multi-platform license, for crying out loud) has just managed to pull itself up out of sewer.

The two reviews stand in stark contrast, with 2K10 getting marks for fixing last year's fiasco of a game and some basic gameplay tweaks. The Show's review reads like a love letter to Sony, and damn if I don't want to rush out and buy a PS3 just to see this:

At the end of a play, players don't go into mannequin mode. They greet each other at first base, shake their spikes out and adjust their caps. Fans lean over the railing at foul balls. Boston's Victor Martinez flexes his bicep at each base on a home-run trot. I saw an umpire get blasted by a foul tip and drop to his knees in agony. This isn't core gameplay. But just like doubles off the wall and diving catches, this also is what happens in baseball.

That sounds like so much fun that I wouldn't even care if it took me a few days to finally win a game.

(Image from 2KSports.com)

This is my "prove it to me" face

There's an interesting article on Kotaku about the spring release of MLB 2K10, which amounts to your only option for a simulation-based baseball game on the Xbox 360 this year. Obviously, you can always go out and buy "The Bigs" but if you want a game that most closely resembles what you see on TV (especially in the post-Roid era) this is it.

For the record, last year was the first time in a decade that I opted for none of the above when springtime rolled around and I needed my baseball fix. If you need any explanation as to why, look no further than the review's first few sentences:

2K Sports' baseball franchise, maybe more than any other sports title, will have this year's title judged against and compared to last year's offering, and not for its good qualities.

It's hard to tell whether last year's MLB 2K9 - one of the worst-reviewed (and deservedly so) games ever for this class of sports simulation - raises or lowers consumer expectations for MLB 2K10. 2K9 suffered from glitches, clipping, bizarre baserunning and fielding AI, and, frankly, unacceptable graphics, especially in the player modeling.

Setting that aside, I was unimpressed with the buggy nature of the previous offering and decided that I wasn't going to waste any more money until I saw some signs of improvement.

It's become industry standard for sports titles to update rosters, add new stadiums and introduce a new control gimmick, regardless of the sport. Jump around to reviews of the Madden franchise and you'll likely see complaints that echo those thoughts.

At the core, however, I require the games to play and play well. Unfortunately, after signing the exclusive license, 2K went off the rails with its baseball offerings. Those shortcoming are well-documented here. And here. And here (which is my favorite, as I got to title a post, "Thanks for the bobblehead, a-holes).

By this early report, it looks like the franchise might be on the mend - but I still find it appalling that the reason they claim last year was such a failure was a nine-month production timeline. While I can appreciate that the team is apparently taking responsibility for such a failure, that doesn't do much to restore their credibility until they start to produce a worthwhile product again.

More than that, where's the pressure from MLB to get this right or to step aside for someone who can produce? They have essentially handed their exclusive license over to a company that not only shoots themselves in the foot, but also edges baseball out of a market that is already dominated by the Maddens and FIFAs of the world.

By my count, it's been 2 or 3 years since I've seen a respectable game for the 360 and I'm out of patience. I can only imagine how upset the league must be at this point.

(Image from: 2kSports.com)

But does the damn thing work?

Like a moth to a flame, people are getting excited about the newest offering from 2K Sports as baseball season approaches.

Apparently gamers are just gluttons for punishment with short memories - regardless of whether or not they're also Cubs fans.

Gamespot has the breakdown between MLB 2K9 and MLB 09: The Show (the PS3 offering that continually ranks higher than the 2K9 version). It's worth mentioning that because of the respective contracts involved, 2K owns the rights to produce games for every platform with their MLB license, while The Show is only available for Sony platforms.

Here are last year's posts when I initially picked up MLB 2K8 and proceeded to get increasingly pissed off as the game remained a trash heap of bugs, the forums descended into chaos and rumors and name-calling.

I guess that's why I'm concerned to see new features and graphics being pimped as the reason to buy this year's attempt at a video game. While I can certainly understand a company's reluctance to promote a product on the basis of, "We suck less this year!" I'd really appreciate an acknowledgment of customer concerns that have carried over from year to year.

Features are great, the card system was fun when it worked and I did legitimately enjoy the new pitching interface they unveiled last year. However, when I put the game away for good, it wasn't because there weren't enough bells and whistles, it was when the game crashed for the third or fourth time in a month.

Fix pesky little details like that and I'll consider forking over another $60 this year.

(Image from: Gamespot.com)

Things are not pleasant in the 2K Sports family

It's only been a few days since Opening Day, but the posters to the 2K Sports forums are getting restless.

And more than just a little restless - users are getting banned here, people!

Logged under "The next new thread that is opened..." is this from one of the moderators, obviously sick of the gamers losing their minds that Kosuke Fukudome is still playing under an assumed name.

(For those who are totally lost, when new games come out for the next-gen, networked machines, content is updated, released and downloaded by people who own the game. After the season starts, roster updates are pushed through to update for trades, rookies, etc. This update is now a few days late and the fanboys are going bonkers.)

This little jewel from the moderator post is what made me giggle tonight:

I understand your guys frustration for the still lacking patch. But if you read my thread, I said it was imminently going to be released. It has been approved by Microsoft. You'll get it when they put it up.

You guys can complain all you want. But you're making my job a lot harder not putting all your thoughts in one thread. There is an official thread about the patch/lack thereof. The next people who open a new thread about the patch are going on vacation.

That sounds incredibly sinister for a moderator post in an open forum. I can only imagine the patience it must take to put up with spoiled 12-year-olds and angry gamers all day.

I'd still prefer to have an enjoyable, bug-free gaming experience, but it's not like I'm going to raise holy hell about it on the message boards. That's what this blog is for...

(Image from 2KSports.com)

Where is "None of the above?"

Gamespot.com has a feature up where users can vote on which baseball games for the next-gen consoles are doing well in recreating the players in digital form.

While some are pretty accurate, others - like Randy Johnson, who has only been in the league since his rookie season with Hippo Vaughn and is pictured at the right - fall very, very short in each of the three games.

So, check out the offerings from MLB 2K8, MLB: The Show and The Bigs and their varying degrees of success. Then think back to the fact that roughly 10 years ago guys in college sat around and played RBI Baseball for the NES and got along fine with players that didn't have much in the way of facial features.

On a moderately related note, it appears that Barry Bonds was erased from the digital world before he was scrubbed from AT&T Park this week, with no mention of his records in MLB 2K8 for the second year that I'm aware of.

Bonds has been left out of licensed games for years, creating an odd, developer-created players like Jon Dowd, Joe Young and Reggie Stocker in his place in the past. This poses the question - is Bonds being excluded on the records side because he didn't enter into the MLBPA or because the development teams are trying to make some sort of statement.

Sadly, until Kevin Millar starts making a run for a record like most times hit by a pitch or strikeouts, we may never know.

(Image from GameSpot.com)

Thanks for the bobblehead, a-holes

The next in a long line of disappointing releases surrounding Major League Baseball
is apparently Major League Baseball 2K8 for the Xbox 360.

Just a quick glance at the 2K Sports message boards seems to support this perception. Unfortunately, without any competition because of the exclusive licensing deal, there's not a lot of room for gamers to take their dollars elsewhere. As happy as I was to see Electronic Arts get screwed after they locked out competition in the NFL market, it seems that many of the worst case scenarios imagined by angry sports gamers are now here.

I won't get into too much detail right now - in fairness, I've only been able to play the game for a very short period of time so far - but with overhauls of the pitching, batting and fielding mechanics, it's just asking for trouble.

I appreciate the effort made by the developers as they tied all of the essential game functions to the two analog sticks on the controller and are getting away from traditional button pushing. For example, instead of pushing a button to swing, you pull back the stick on the controller to start your step and push ahead to swing - it's an impressive step towards a more intuitive game and I understand that.

Here are my concerns after limited time spent with 2K8:

* In two games with my franchise mode, both have been rained out before the fifth inning, making the game's stats irrelevant by rule. However, the calendar won't advance without the game being recorded. So, I'm back where I started, having to play Opening Day for a third time this evening.

* The printed instructions that came with the game are incorrect. They apparently cut and pasted last year's manual, changed the headings to SwingStick 2.0 and sent off the game. It took combing through the forums to confirm that the instructions were misprinted. Awesome.

* For 60 bucks, I get a free Jose Reyes bobblehead and a buggy game. Luckily, the Xbox 360 accepts updates via an Internet connection, so some of the glitches will be fixed. While I can appreciate the fact that games can now be patched in order to correct problems, you know what's better?

A game that's properly tested and programmed before its release date. That's like 100 times better.