Okay, I promise, I’m not going to turn this into a sports blog, or something. But this year, for no discernible reason, I’m really stoked about baseball (despite the Phillies’ 1-5 start to the season), so I think about it a fair amount, which means that time normally spent thinking on column topics like “Natasha Bedingfield Makes Me Happy To Be Male” and “How Prince Continues to Be Ridiculous Well Into His Forties” is spent on wondering “Why Barry Bonds Doesn’t Seem To Actually Be In My New Baseball Video Game.”
Today’s topics: last week’s fantasy baseball results (don’t worry, I’ll keep it short), and a review of MLB 2K6, the new baseball game from 2KSports.
You may recall my column of like 3 years ago (actually just last month), in which I said about Craig’s team:
Other than batting average and a certain amount of speed, the team is pretty abysmal in the other aspects of batting, with no better than 9th in the league in Runs, HR, and RBI.
And also:
Craig’s pitching situation is just weird; he’s above average, although not anywhere close to league-leading, in ERA and WHIP, but ranked no better than 7th in Wins, Saves, or Strikeouts.
Yeah, about that: Craig is now the league leader at 9-2-1. (We play 12 “games” per week, one “game” consisting of a head-to-head matchup in a given category. Craig was better than his opponent in 9 out of 12 categories, worse in 2, and tied in one.) Lesson learned: I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
I posted a 9-3 record for the week, so I’m a half game out of first place, and looking to play the Late Term As, who went 8-3-1.
League leaders:
| Stat | Owner | |
| Runs | Loewen | 48 |
| RBI | Dave | 40 |
| Steals | Dave | 7 |
| Field% | Tim | .990 |
| Bat Avg | Dave | .368 |
| OPS | Loewen | 1.028 |
| Wins | Matt | 6 |
| Fewest Losses | Tim | 0 |
| Saves | Tim | 10 |
| Strikeouts | Matt | 78 |
| ERA | Tim | 2.81 |
| WHIP | Smith | 1.06 |
On to my game review. A few weeks ago I grabbed MLB 2K6 at Best Buy, and I’ve been playing a few games a day since then. If I could condense the entire review down to one word, it would be: “glitchful.”
It just doesn’t seem like a finished product; it’s like I’m playing a beta. At least once or twice a game, it’ll freeze for a split second. This is invariably when I’m trying to time a swing, or I’m trying to throw a close pitch inside, and it sucks. Also, there’s always weird things happening, although they don’t interfere with gameplay: after a guy gets thrown out at first, occasionally he’ll spend 10-15 seconds running in a circle around the base before the game continues. Very odd.
The gameplay is overall pretty good; the most recent baseball game I’d played until MLB 2K6 was Electronic Arts’ MVP 2003, which was pretty good, but frighteningly easy. I kept it set on All-star mode and still managed to hit 92 home runs in a season with one player. The new game is much more realistic; I had it on rookie for a while until I got the hang of things, and now have it on Pro. There’s at least 2 levels above this.
One upgrade from MVP 2003 is that fielding makes sense; with MVP you either turned on fielding help, which meant you didn’t have to do anything, or turned it off, which means you had to do EVERYTHING, including figure out how to have the reaction time to snare hot grounders to the holes. With MLB 2K6, the fielders take the reaction time out of the equation by at least STARTING towards the ball, although after a half second or so you have to take over and get them the rest of the way, and then throw. This is as difficult as it sounds, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty cool.
Stealing is improved; with MVP 2003 steals were thrown out roughly 80% of the time. Now you’re MUCH more likely to actually get your base, particularly with a fast runner. I think Jimmy Rollins and Bobby Abreu are 6/6 between them. Baserunning in general is REALLY hard to control, though. I miss the dealy from MVP in which you would select a runner and then tell him what base to go to. Now you have to select a runner and hit L1 a bunch of times, or R1 to backtrack, and look at him to see where you’ve told him to go, which means you aren’t watching the fielders gather up and throw the ball. Plus nobody seems to be fast enough to score from 2nd on a single; even the aforementioned Jimmy Rollins gets thrown out most of the time. Also, the runners have a tendency to round first on a single and take their time getting back when the outfielders get the ball in, and I’ve been thrown out at first at least twice because they didn’t get back quickly enough. Just ridiculous; this kind of poor baserunning NEVER. EVER. EEEVVVEEERRRR. Happens in real life. Even my fat lazy ass wouldn’t get thrown out at first in that situation.
The graphics are pretty standard, not much improved from previous years. I think they spent the bulk of their graphics budget on making the Xbox 360 version look really good, which makes a certain amount of sense. The player faces are very well drawn, though, and they do a really nice job of actually having the bat hit the ball on swings, and having fielders pick up the ball instead of just getting near it and having it disappear and magically reappear in their hands.
The sounds are really, really good. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan sound great, although they do repeat themselves occasionally, but the sound guys did a good job of making sure they could fit player and team names into their sentences without obvious changes in inflection. Very impressive.
One major downside: there’s no practice modes. At all. They’ve come up with this new model of swings, which sounds like it’d be a lot of fun to try, but I’m not interested in trying to learn it while playing a game. I want a batting practice mode in which a guy lobs slow fastballs right over the center of the plate while I work out the timing. So the new hitting model, which involves pulling back on the right joystick and then letting go of it at just the right time, goes largely unused (you can still go to the standard “hit X at the right instant” mode). I would also have enjoyed learning the new pitching setup before facing the Cardinals lineup, although at least that game pretty much mirrored Jon Lieber’s actual opening day start. I think I gave up 7 runs in the first inning.
Overall grade: C+. Fix the glitches and put in some practice (or even better, some instruction modes with Harold Reynolds) and I’ll upgrade to a A-. (Seriously, not having any practice modes is just redickerous.)
MLB ’06: The Show is a definite A-. The gameplay is great, the graphics and sound are very solid, and the skill level is just about right. The franchise mode is very thorough (as alwasy) but now you can turn on/off specific features that you don’t want to worry about (renewing contracts, advertising, scouting, and rehabbing; I’m all over trading, drafting, training, and playing the actual games). There’s also a new Career mode where you create yourself and work through the minors up to a HOFer, but you don’t control the lineup, playing time, etc. A few minor bugs with baserunning (too many successful pickoffs) and passed balls/wild pitches, but all-in-all great.
FYI – Bonds is not part of the Union’s licensing package which means you have to pay him BOKU bucks to have his name in the game (normally the game developers pay the Union a lump sum which gets distributed). He’s a b—h who just wants more money than everyone else, so the game makers just put in a similarly skilled, shaped, and paid player in his place.
Yeah. That’s pretty awesome. And by awesome I mean “horrifically boring.” I hope I’m able to read your next post without getting a quarter of the way through and then waking up a half-hour later with drool on my boobs. Thanks much.