Consoleation Review: MLB 2K10 (Xbox 360)

Spring Training is finally underway for the 2010 season of Major League Baseball, and this time of year also means that new baseball games tend to make their appearances. I’ve been spending time with MLB 2K10 on my Xbox 360 over the last couple of days and finally have some time to write up a few thoughts about the game. It’s definitely an improvement over last year’s QA disaster, but it doesn’t yet have the goods to challenge Sony‘s baseball franchise, The Show, for the best baseball game around. 

The thing about MLB 2K10 that struck me right away is the presentation value, which has improved significantly over last year’s game. In fact, this is probably the best presentation that Visual Concepts has put together for a baseball game since their union with ESPN gave us Major League Baseball 2K5. There are plenty of stat overlays and the three-man booth of Gary Thorne, Steve Phillips, and John Kruk is at least on the same level as the commentary team associated with The Show. While there’s certainly some repetition as the season moves along, much of the commentary is insightful and reactive to the situation at hand and at that point in the season. Relevant observations about schedules, standings, and recent player and team performances are surprisingly good. Some things, like the upcoming schedule, tend to get used too much within a series, but it’s tolerable. There are times when lines of commentary are timed wrong, but these instances are few and far between. If you’re a fan of telecast-style presentation, like I am, MLB 2K10 will impress you more often than not. 

Batting and pitching controls can be designated to the analog sticks or assigned to face buttons in a more traditional style. Analog pitching requires two consecutive motions with the right analog stick, depending on the pitch that you want to make. I’ve found that these pitching gestures don’t always seem to register accurately, and making a mistake on a pitch can be the difference in a close game. Hitting with the analog stick is a bit easier than pitching, although the swapping more complex analog stick movements for more precise timing isn’t necessarily a fair trade. Timing for hitting is difficult because pitch speeds doesn’t seem to vary enough, at least in a visual sense. Daniel Bard’s 100mph fastball doesn’t seem to have the explosiveness that it should on-screen. In fact, it looks like a regular fastball at 92-94mph. Breaking pitches have movement at least, but it’s the sense of speed that pitches seem to lack. Fielding doesn’t always feel tight, and it’s easy to press the right trigger button for a burst of speed that isn’t there. This button makes the player dive instead of speed up, leading to costly errors and long-distance controller tosses across the house. Baserunning also isn’t exactly intuitive, especially when it comes to commanding runners to steal. The players don’t always seem to react to the steal command, and I’m left to wonder why they don’t move. 

MLB 2K10 has its fair share of gameplay modes. The biggest new addition is My Player, which draws at least some inspiration from Sony’s Road to the Show mode. Create a player, achieve goals, and try to earn him a spot on an MLB roster. It sounds simple, but it’s not. The player progression process is not exactly rapid, even if you manage to achieve most of the goals that are set for you during each game. Early on, expect struggles either as a pitcher or a hitter. Pitchers start out with only three available pitches in their arsenals, and learning extra pitches requires a huge investment of skill points… and these skill points wind up getting diverted from improving certain skills and make the process that much harder. Being a hitter comes with its own set of challenges, as making solid contact with pitches is a tough thing to do when your player’s ratings are so low. If you’re willing to devote a lot of time, you can indeed gradually improve your player and give him a real shot at the big time, but if you expect relatively quick payoffs in My Player, expect to be disappointed. 

MLB Today allows you to play the same games that are going on in a given day. Do you want to create your own outcome in today’s Red Sox and Yankees game? This is the way to do it. There are a couple of Achievements tied to this, but its real draw is allowing players to literally jump in and start playing without a bunch of setup. This is how I got my first taste of MLB 2K10, as I played the opening game of the Spring Training schedule as the New York Mets as they hosted the Atlanta Braves. I wound up losing the game 2-1, but it was very exciting. 

The Franchise mode is where most of my time has been spent. I am not as big as some in terms of signing players and fidgeting with lineups, but playing through seasons and seeing stats accumulate as the schedule plays out has always been a big thing with me. I’m playing as the Boston Red Sox (although I did think about the Arizona Diamondbacks since I now live here outside of Phoenix), and all of the games have been enjoyable. One particular 7-3 win against the Yankees was a great example of back-and-forth baseball, and I came within one out of throwing a no-hitter with Daisuke Matsuzaka versus the Kansas City Royals. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tense come the 7th inning and beyond. There have been big moments in each game, all punctuated by emotional and timely commentary and the game’s excellent broadcast presentation; huge strikeouts to end rallies, monster home runs, key double plays, and more. The games are exciting, and you feel an emotional investment as you play. 

MLB 2K10 is a decent game visually, although there are still some flaws. The ballparks look great with functioning scoreboards and progressive lighting effects. There are plenty of different animations for pitchers and hitters; for example, Kevin Youkilis has his unique batting grip and Daisuke Matsuzaka has that pregnant pause and rocking motion in the middle of his windup. There are times when the animations are a bit jerky or seem out of place,, and these instances are not difficult to spot. As mentioned, there are stat overlays and other telecast touches like instant replays and camera cutaways. One nitpick that I’d made in my piece regarding the demo of MLB 2K10 had to do with rather pointless foul ball cutaways, and unfortunately they still exist in the final game. The camera cuts too late to foul balls, going from the batter to a view of a foul ball coming to rest or to a view of the stands near where a foul ball probably landed. There is no point to see this as the ball has already pretty much finished its movement. In terms of the players, the faces are still a mixed bag; some players look like their real-life counterparts while others just look… wrong. MLB 2K10 also doesn’t run at a consistent frame rate. While The Show usually glides along at 60 frames per second, there are times in MLB 2K10 when 30 frames is the standard– usually for replays. The last gripe I have is with the camera; as I pointed out in my impression of the demo, the camera still sometimes has a difficult time keeping up with the baseball. Replays, especially of home runs, have this problem a lot. 

The sound in MLB 2K10 is generally top-notch, anchored by the game’s commentary team and a pretty good soundtrack. Gary Thorne can sometimes can across a little too strongly, but Steve Phillips and John Kruk do a great job of balancing Thorne’s excitement with solid analysis and observations. The music is varied, ranging from grunge legends Pearl Jam to hip-hop greats Black Sheep. The game supports custom soundtracks, too, you can set specific songs for certain batters or game events. The game’s sound effects aren’t quite as strong; the crack of the bat continues to be especially weak and this continues the trend for 2K Sports titles with sub-par effects.

I don’t expect to play online anytime soon, but MLB 2K10 does have online capability so that you can pit your favorite team against tons of potential players. Custom difficulty sliders can also be shared, as can VIP profiles and Pressbooks– which are collections of photos “taken” during a game. Living Rosters mean that player trends and stats are regularly updated so that if you’re playing along with games on certain days, player ratings in those games will reflect what’s going on with that player at that point in time. If he’s on a hot streak in the real season, he’ll tear the cover off the ball in this game. If a pitcher is giving up lots of homers, he’ll be susceptible in this game. MLB 2K10 is completely playable online or offline, but having online connectivity adds those extra features. 

MLB 2K10 is good enough to make nightmares from last year’s game almost completely disappear. There are still a few bugs that appear from time to time; at one point, I saw a bat gravitate up to a batboy’s hands, lightsaber-style… but that was once. Sure, there really aren’t any other baseball choices for the Xbox 360– at least until the exclusivity agreement between Major League Baseball and 2K Sports ends– but this year’s game easily wins the Most Improved award and is gaining on The Show in at least some areas. This year, Xbox 360 owners who are baseball fans on any level can feel pretty satisfied knowing that MLB 2K10 is a genuinely solid effort and is worth playing. 

Posted via web from Consoleation Version 3.0