MLB2K6 (360)
Well, it's just shit, really.There's your mini-review.
Here's the disclaimer: I really, really like 2K Sports. ESPN NFL2K5 was a fantastic football game. NB2K6 and College Hoops 2K6 are the best next-gen sports titles, by far. And the NHL series is the finest hockey simulation ever made (building on the foundation that Treyarch laid with NHL2K3).
I've played baseball games for twenty years, and I've played almost every one. So when I say that this game is a colossal embarrassment to both Kush and Take 2, that it needed months of additional development before it was ready to release, I'm not saying it lightly. This game is so bad that it wouldn't surprise me at all if it permanently damages the relationship between Take 2 and Kush, and it should--Take 2 should be running away as fast as they can after this game.
It's a well-designed game, really. The feature set is excellent, some of the innovations (like the Inside Edge feature and analog stick hitting) are terrific, and the presentation is high quality. Unfortunately in this case, all these positives are like putting makeup and a party dress on a pig--you might make her stink a little less, but it doesn't make her the homecoming queen.
So what's wrong? Everything else, basically. Stunningly bad A.I., horrific ball physics, unbelievably bad field textures, terrible animation transitions, crappy player models, terrible frame rates, nearly unusable camera angles, and disastrous fielding controls.
That's one big sentence of stink.
Here's how sports games seem real: they lay down layer after layer of detail, and if those details are authentic, the game begins to feel real. It's not any more complicated than that, really, and the great games (like Winning Eleven) lay down so many layers of authentic detail that it is tremendously convincing. That's also what MLB06: The Show does so successfully.
When I talk about layers, I mean at all levels: graphics, animation, audio, A.I. It's like sitting in a rainstorm. Hundreds of little details, all hitting you like raindrops. If all of them feel like rain, it becomes a rainstorm. If one or two feel like gravel, it's still pretty good. If half of them feel like gravel, and some of them look like gravel, then that's not a rainstorm. And if the gravel starts to smell funny, well, then--that's not gravel.
And there's a lot of smelly gravel in this game. The design is fine, but there are literally hundreds of details that remind you why this is such a lousy piece of work. It's sloppy beyond belief, and many of the details are worse than sloppy--they're just plain wrong.
The graphics are a jarring combination of real/not real. Lighting effects? They seem pretty real, and they're very impressive. Field textures? Cartoony. I've seen infield textures that good--back in 1995. Seriously. And the infield dirt features gigantic, jagged aliasing on the edge between the dirt and the grass. Actually, jagged edges are all over the place.
The ball doesn't look real. The players don't look real. It's a jarring contrast to the ultra-realistic look of NBA2K6, or even College Hoops 2K6. And this is how bad it looks overall: World Series Baseball 2K3 (which supported 720p) looked better on the original Xbox than this game. Kush needed to decide if they were going to go for a realistic look or a stylized look, but you can't mix them, and anyone who looks at the game can see that immediately.
The fans in the outfield bleachers look pretty good, though. And the A.I. when the nearest fans try to catch a foul ball is some of the best in the game.
But if this game looks bad when it's at rest, it looks worse when it's in motion. The animation is, simply put, a nightmare. It's not that there aren't some good animations--there are--but they're mixed in with absolute crap, like the throwing animations, which are just terrible. Even worse, they're almost all at the wrong speed, too--some too fast, some too slow. And the transitions between these animations deserve special mention for being completely craptastic. As a package, the animations wouldn't have been considered good on a last-gen system.
Adding to the lousy animation are the ball physics. Actually even using the word "physics" seems unfair. The movement of the ball in the pitcher cam is classic--it bears absolutely zero resemblance to the arc a baseball actually travels when it's thrown.
And it's a big baseball in pitcher cam. Damn, that ball is big! It's Hardball 6 paging Mike Benna big. When the ball is put into play, though, it's suddenly too small, and it goes from moving way too slowly to moving way too fast. It's crazy. Speed is totally out of sync in this game--too fast, too slow, but almost never the right speed.
The catcher's animated pretty nicely, though. The guy who did that should get a raise.
The A.I.? Let me just say this: I've seen better baserunning in t-ball. I'm not exaggerating for effect, either--I've literally seen better baserunning in t-ball. I'm not talking about the details, even though they're totally idiotic, like baserunners rounding first by hitting the very outside of the bag. No, I mean fundamental baserunning A.I., and here's one of my favorite test situations: runner on second base, ground ball to the right side of the infield, what's going to happen?
The correct answer in almost every case is that the runner on second should go to third. However, I'm absolutely sure that the correct answer is NOT that the runner on second should dive back to the second base bag. That's what you're going to see, though--over and over again. I saw it yesterday on a ground ball to the FIRST baseman, on a tweener where he had to go quite a ways back and to his right to track it down. I've even seen the runner diving back to second on a ground single PAST the first baseman.
You'll also see guys on second base dive back to the bag on pop flies--to center field. I've seen that quite a bit, too.
Runners on second base and a ball's hit in the gap between center field and right field, and the right fielder gets to the ball just before it gets to the warning track? Don't expect that runner to score, like he would every single time in real baseball--sometimes he will, sometimes he won't.
Here's something even better, from Bill Abner over at The Blog for the Sports Gamer
(http://sportsgamer.blogspot.com/). Bill is considered the dean of sports game reviewers, so consider this excerpt in that context:
Last night I'm playing the Reds against the Rockies and Paul Wilson is getting pummeled in the first (see it's not totally unrealistic). Anyway, a Rockie is on 2nd and a base hit goes into RF. The sluggish fielding being what it is, Kearns gets a predictably late jump on the ball. The runner in this case should not only score but he should score standing up w/o a throw. When I finally get the ball into 2nd, I see the runner has stayed on 3rd. Totally baffled I fire up the sloppy replay system (it's sloppy because you have to rewind the tape instead of it being ready from the start. I mean come on.).
What I saw was just brilliant. The runner rounds 3rd base and should clearly score. Instead, the runner continues to run....literally past third base, through the 3rd base coach box...and almost to the dugout. Realizing that he's making Jim Marshall look like a super genius, he stops, heads back to 3rd base and dives head first to the bag. SAFE! Nice slide! Of course I never even threw the ball to 3rd. My 2nd baseman still had it in his hand, watching the Rockie runner and I assume laughing hysterically.
That's a classic. That's as good as the last version of Front Page Sports Football, where sometimes no one would pick up a fumble. Ah, good times.
Maddeningly, though, occasionally runners will do what they're supposed to, which makes you wonder what in the world happened to the A.I. Not finished, clearly, like most of the game.
Again, though, the presentation is excellent. That part of the team had its act together.
Then there are details that just make you shake their head. The umpire is nothing short of bizarre. How often in your life have you heard a major league umpire call out the count? Never. In this game, though, they do it constantly. They're so wordy they might have a future in broadcasting. It's not like we can't already see the count on the intrusive scoreboard overlay that's dropped significantly from the top of the screen.
Fielding controls? Horrible. They're not "momentum based"--they're just plain unresponsive. The animations are out of sync with themselves, and they're out of sync with the controls, and overall it's just crap. And there's no auto-fielding option, so even if you wanted to avoid the whole mess, you couldn't.
Special kudos goes to the "broadcast" camera at the new Busch Stadium, which is positioned behind a chain link fence. Great view, fellas. And I haven't even mentioned the fielders sometimes doing a happy little circle dance for no apparent reason.
Think this is long? Hell, I've got four more pages of notes. This game is a catastrophe. It's particularly a catastrophe when Sony has put out a baseball game that is better in every aspect on a wheezing old geezer like the PS2. And on the PSP, MLB06: The Show looks significantly better than MLB2k6 does on a high-definition set.
One last thing: tons of people are having problems with the game freezing, and Take 2 has acknowledged the problem. Believe me, if you bought this game, that's a best-case scenario. Take it back and get a refund if you can.
As Forrest Gump might say: suck is as suck does. And man, does this game suck.
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