Major League Baseball 2K6

As a huge baseball fan and moderately fired-up gamer, I was primed to enjoy MLB 2K6 PSP. I'd read how the graphics were so hot you could tell the players apart just by looking at them. Surely it had to be better than the cheapie game I downloaded onto my LG cell phone -- you know, the one where your runner stays glued to first base while the batter hits one off the wall, resulting in your basic 8-4 fielder's choice.

Well..... Certainly the graphics are impressive. The game LOOKS right. But playing it? Forget it. Maybe it's me; maybe I've lost all hand-eye coordination overnight. But I found 2K6 absolutely unplayable. I lost my first two games by a combined score of something like 26-4. Figuring I needed to crawl before I could walk, I then opted to play the Yankees against the lowly Royals. Only lost 6-0 this time!

Don't get me wrong; I'm not ticked off that I kept losing. I'm a loser all around, I'm okay with that. But check out the way you lose. Your runners get thrown out on the basepaths left and right, even if you aren't particularly aggressive about sending them off. I somehow managed to get 12 hits in one game without scoring! Has there even been a 12-hit shutout in the big leagues? If there has been, it probably wasn't much fun, and neither was this.

Defense? Sometimes it works fine. Other times, your outfielder might decide to pull a St. Vitus Dance on you, turning a single into an inside-the-parker for the other team. And for some delightful reason, whenever the other team has a guy on first, your catcher decides to rebel against his job description and allow pitches to fly over his head. He also turns out to be crotchety about chasing the errant throw, resulting in your basic first-to-third-on-a-passed-ball play. Fun fun fun!

The hitting works all right, the pitching is good, the graphics are great. Hopefully the glitches will go away next year. Yeah, that's right, wait 'til next year!

Let me start off by saying that the standard by which I hold all baseball games to is "world Series Baseball '98" (WSB) for the Sega Saturn. It's hands down the deepest, intracitly designed, complete baseball game I've ever played. So if you've played that game, then you'll have a basis for some of what I talk about in this review. Next, I'm in Iraq, I spend a lot of time on three/four-day-on, two-day-off trips to patrol bases in sector where there's nothing to do. so even little bits of distraction score more points with me these days and thus my review may be biased towards an over enjoyment of some of the 'time-killing' features in this game and not just the actual game play (which i still think is solid).

I've played two baseball games this year, 2K6 on PSP and MLB 2006: The Show on PSP. Between them i loved 2K6. It's all about the flow of the game. for starters the games go buy at just the right pace for me taking about 45 minutes for nine innings. MLB "The Show" was closer to the average 2 hours of a real life game. If your into things being simulated down to the time it takes in between pitches then 2K6 fails. But for me it felt right. It was balanced, just like WSB. Next to that, the season mode seams to have just the right amount of depth with controls over the
DL, minor league call-ups, fatigue factors (fine tuning your lineups and pitching rotations becomes a necessity) and computer trade offers (the trade system over all is good, not great, but close). overall the extras don't make the game five star worthy, but close. something i'd like to see that would make it 'five star worthy' would be deeper minor league rosters with an ability to GM those franchises as well, a-la WSB. There are ways to keep that stuff in as an option that could be unintrusive to people who don't want to use it, and i doubt it would add much to the size of the games code build so it could fit on the psp disk, i'm not sure why it's never done anymore. I would say that baseball games as a whole could be improved if they added in more statistical, GM, and managerial controls into the games. After all, like yogi said, baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical. Beyond all that there are some presentiation issues, music and such that would improve the game (the play by play is actually pretty good and less repetitive then i would have thought with some commentary by joe morgan) but it is a hand held version, i'm sure the 'big boy' versions are better at it.

on a further downside here I will say that the game seemed too rushed sometimes. For instance in between innings when i might want to take a quick breather because I just barely edged my way out of a no-out bases loaded stuation. The game might jump right into the next inning as if i had pressed a button to skip the graphics (i didn't) and the computer starts hurling pitches. so you need to be quick on the pause button. also there's a lot of cool scouting tools available for you so you can, you know, stratigize your game a little like a real manager would, but you gotta be quick in setting them up or perusing the stats because the computer will just start pitching and you can't call time to set it up. and here the puse button doesn't help. (for people have played this game already, what i'm talking about here is the hot/cold zones graphic for my batters which i like to have displayed. once it's set up to be the default in the batter's display it stays there for the inning, but I alwys have to waste the first pitch in an inning to set it up because it's no longer the default next at bat) While i'm sort of on the topic, i also wish that the graphics in between batters was a little more in depth. something like previous at bat stats for the game. just flash it up there. you can set it as the display at the top, but again you don't have any time to peruse the stats unless you're willing to waste some swing opportunities. down to three-and-a-half stars.

Beyond that, there are some glitches. but in all the psp sports games I've played (madden '06, nba live '06, mlb 06 'the show') there seem to be occasional glitches. most of them found in this game are minor, things like the batter not returning straight to the dugout after striking out for the third out in an inning. Or a runner running perpetually into the outfield after a close play at first calls him out. they don't affect the game, just the visuals and so i don't take note of them much. but while most of the gameplay is solid, there are glitches that affect it a bit. the game has some screwy baserunning AI that doesn't help you out at all and is hard to control so you inadvertantly send the wrong player to the wrong base or they stop in the middle of a force out play at third or something like that. sometimes my runner just circles a base (literally runs circles around the freakin' base not just accedintly turns the corner) or tags third and runs back to second only to be tagged out. Further, twice my runner rounded first to start up to second on a play that surely could not be stretched into a double and the computer threw from the outfield to second, then to first getting my guy out. in fairness, i was also able to catch the computer on this as well. Another glitch is in the way the fielders sometimes run automaticly after a pop fly and then stop short or off target and fail a routine play at a much too frequent rate to be acceptable. some games i just turn off because the feilding is too rediculous to be considered just user error, too bad to be chalked up to even a random bad/unlucky outing by your players. down to three stars

Still, this is a pretty solid game if you don't mind one out of five of the ball games you play being 'glitched out'. It's addicting, intuitive (to me anyway), and the 'physical' side of the game is good with enough 'mental' additions to make a season interesting. it isn't WSB, but nothing ever is or has been.

I've played a ton of sports games on PSP and other systems but have always found baseball games a little dull (sort of like their real world counterpart IMO - sorry!). That was until I discovered 2K MLB a few months ago. That is a great game which really puts you in the action with intuitive controls, great views, and good commentary. I actually learned to appreciate the subtleties of baseball as a result.

I thought the only thing that might be better would be the new 2K6 version. Well, I was wrong. The controls on the new version are horrible and not intuitive at all. Also, the players don't always respond to the controls which is frustrating. There are silly bugs that should have been worked out well before release. For example, after striking out for the third out the batter remains at the plate waiting expectantly for another pitch while everyone else is running off the field. I had a player run through first and continue running all the way down the foul line. I guess he had to go to the bathroom or something!

The game is slow to load on the PSP and the commentary lags well behind the action - unlike the earlier version. The views are bad, jumping around so much that it is impossible to suspend disbelief. The pitching controls seem to be different only for the sake of changing things. They are no more realistic or fun. Overall, this game is a big disappointment. I highly recommend picking up the original 2K release in the bargain bin instead.

Do you like baseball. Well everyone has been saying that this game sucks but it really is better than what I expected from them.

Graphics 9/10: The stadiums are very accurate. All of the player models are accurate and they each posses their actual stance.

Sound 8/10: Sure, the music is repeated from other 2k Sports games but EA Sports does the exact same thing. The commentary just like World Poker Tour (and other 2k Sports games) have very little to say and sometimes I can't hear them during the game.

Controls 8/10: I lost my first game 1-0 and then finally understood how to use the controls. At one point, I couldn't even hit the darn ball. Then I looked in the manual and it was easy to find out. It will take a little time for the average gamer to figure out these intricate controls. But this game rewards consistancy.

Fun 7/10: This game was very realistic. I felt like I was playing a baseball game. For once a game doesn't copy MVP Baseball's pitching style. This pitching has to be timed perfectly to throw the ball where you want it to go. The replay svreen and batting were dead on. Also, 2K Sports shows where pitches went and how fast they were on replays. The only problems were the endless loading, and repeated announcing. The loading wan't that bad though because they had questions for the gamer to figure out. This fun rating originally was rated a 9 but after playing some more, the game had bugs in it and shut down for absolutly no reason 3 times for me in one hour.

Overall: This game is great. Also, baseball cards (3 of them) come with the game. This game is a must buy for the PSP library.

Score: 7/10 3.7/5
By the way this game is rated E for everyone and costs 39.99

MLB 2K6 was kind of a dissapointment. 2K5 for the PS2 was a good game, and I was expecting the same here.

Graphics: 7/10. The character models look great, the stadiums look somewhat close to how they actually look, and that's about it. The fans look like sickening chunks of vomit ( can't expect much for it being a PSP ). The character movements are also realistic; which is cool, but it's really bad if you are playing in the outfield. A thing I also noticed, is that some players don't have helmets on when their batting, and some don't have their hats on when they're in the outfield. For me, I noticed that Vladamir Guererro has this problem. Nothing big at all, but it obviously was a mistake made.

Sound: 7/10. The annoying "hardcore elevator music" at the main menu is really annoying. 2K5 didn't have really good music either, though. Just those ESPN beats. The commentators get the calls done, but about 70% of the time, it's not on time. They will often call a play 5 seconds or so after it happens. When you hit the ball, it makes a strange sound, too. It makes the same sound every time, and it just doesn't sound like a bat on ball. It's kind of a sound that would wake you up in the middle of the night after something fell in the garage.

Control: 6/10. These controls are really just pretty damn frustrating. Initially, I thought I couldn't live with pitching; trying to aim the ball at the corners to get these guys swinging; but I did get used to it. That isn't my big problem though; I'd definitely say the fielding is worse. If a ball is hit in the outfield and you for whatever reason accidently move the analog nub in the wrong direction and try to go back towards the ball, you will miss it because the people just take so long to turn around. Another annoying thing that in a real baseball game would easily get a guy out, is the horrible infielding. If there is a ground ball, the guy ( usually the short stop ) will just lob it over to 1st base, when he really should rocket it; which often gets the man on base. Hell, many times there will be an inside the park homerun if your outfielder misses a ground ball rolling into the open. It extremely annoying and pretty much ruins this game.

Fun: 7/10. This game is really not as bad to the point where it's not playable, but it really is not buyable. Rent this game and check it out, you will either like it or won't. There is Ad-Hoc and Infrastructure online play, though, but I haven't played it yet because my Wi-Fi is broken. Wait for the MLB 2K7 addition, or if you can't wait and have a PS2, pick up MLB 2K5. It's a more "complete" game. MLB 2K5 doesn't have trivia during loading times though like MLB 2K6 ;].

6.8/10