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I should start this mini review with a disclaimer: I had high hopes for 2K Sports’ MLB series after I read that EA’s Ben Brinkman (who had worked on MVP Baseball) was coming over to 2K to work on MLB. Unfortunately, now that I’ve been playing MLB 2K8 on my Xbox 360 for the past week and a half, I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed.

There are so many problems with this game it isn’t funny. I’m sick and tired of waiting all season for a new baseball game only to find that the new one is just as crappy as the last. Especially after they hype it up all year, talking about how great it’s going to be. This game gets an F in my book.

My personal commentary on the series is this: They’ve lost sight of what really matters in a baseball game, and that’s just freakin’ PLAYING BASEBALL. They spend way too much time on new features (like the stupid baseball card simulator) and making the uniforms ripple in the wind, and not enough time just making the game work. Until they refocus on game play, this series will continue to suck, year after year.

The good:

• Graphics look good
• Presentation looks nice as well
• Current rosters
• You can play baseball
• ESPN News is integrated into the bottom of the screen, just like a real broadcast

The bad:

• Tons and tons of bugs:
  • Mid-game announcements routinely get things wrong: like announcers talking about hitting an inside the park homer, yet I’ve never hit one
  • Presentation stats are often wrong: when I went to the post season in Franchise mode the first game showed that the pitchers had a 0-0 win-loss record (like they would in the first post season game), but they showed ERAs and strike outs from the regular season
  • Half the time the new pitching system won’t recognize my controller inputs and will fail to execute the second half of a pitch, resulting in an extremely annoying meatball
• The new pitching systems SUCKS big time. I’m almost always throwing meatballs.
• Base running controls suck more than they did last time, especially with more than one runner on base. I’m constantly sending runners to the wrong place. Oh and this time it takes twice as long for the runner to stop and go back to a base
• I still hit more homers and doubles than base hits
• The AI seems to throw way more strikes than balls
• That could be because its twice as hard to figure out if a pitch will be a ball than last time
• Fielding a player in the first couple seconds is weird, often I’ll be controlling the wrong guy by default and will miss a routine ground ball.
• After a visit to the mound I’ll hit A to skip the cutscene, but the game will both skip the cut scene and throw a meatball pitch down the center of the plate (when using the 2K7 pitching controls)

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I find it annoying that the only RSS feed I can get from the OC Register about Angels baseball is their feed about the whole of Orange County sports. I don’t care about basketball, football (do we even have a football team?), or soccer. I just want my Angels news!

So I took their RSS feed and using Yahoo Pipes filtered out the crap I don’t want! Pretty sweet! It only took like 3 minutes and I had the feed I wanted.

Here it is for you to enjoy as well: OC Register - Angels

Yay! I got my Xbox back finally. Seems ok so far. At least I was able to play a game of MLB 2K7! Phew! I was having withdrawals.

Speaking of baseball, the Angels have their first game in only 11 days! Woo hooo!!! The first game I’m going to is on April 25th versus the lowly Devil Rays. I didn’t buy season tickets this year, so I decided to just buy a few games here and there… and get much better seats.

Doh. The Angels were officially eliminated from the post season last night At least I got to go to the game and have a good time, despite the loss!

So far we have six people that want to play! Send me an email or post a comment if you want to join us! It will be a lot of fun!

Robin and I have been thinking about starting a softball team for a few months now. Anyone think they would want to join? We’d play a coed schedule in the Huntinton Beach league. I think it would be fun just to play and hang out, it doesn’t matter if you’re good or not, or if you’ve ever even swung a bat before. Let me know what you think!

Here is a link (pdf) to more info from the Huntinton Beach website.

We need a minimum of 12 players and at each game we must have at least 4 men and 4 women.

It will cost the team $420 to enter, plus $15 each game for umpire fees.

When

We would play Friday nights starting @ 6:30, 7:45 and 9:00 pm on a rotating schedule. The league schedule starts August 25th.

Where

The league rotates between these locations:

Edison Park - Magnolia & Hamilton
Greer Park - McFadden & Golden West Streets
Murdy Park - 7000 Norma Drive (Golden West & Warner)
Worthy Community Park - Main & 17th Streets
Golden West College - McFadden & Gothard Streets
Huntington Beach Central Park Sports Complex - 18100 Golden West

Woo hoo, I’m now officially an Angels season ticket holder! And a bonus! I got tickets for the Angels vs Dodgers exhibition games on April 1st and 2nd. Sweet!

Team USA lost 1-2 vs. Mexico last night and was eliminated from the World Baseball Classic. It was a fun game, but it sure didn’t end the way I thought it would have. How can these all-star players play so poorly against teams that shouldn’t have a chance?

I think it comes down pretty much to a lack of practice before hand. This Classic is essentially still spring training to most (if not all) of the MLB players out there. Maybe next time they’ll rework the timing so the teams are better prepared?

Thanks for the tickets Robin! You’re awesome!

Wow! My Dad just told me that Angel Stadium called and said they had some tickets that opened up! Rock on! So now I have two season tickets to the Angels! Woo hooo! My seats are: Section 406 Row F Seats 15 & 16 Ok, so who wants to do the "gimme tickets dance"? Lol. Update: Check out my seats with Google Earth!

Aww man! I went to Angels Stadium a couple weeks ago to pick out my 2006 season tickets, but they’ve SOLD OUT! Lame! So now I’m on a waiting list for next year, and HOPEFULLY I’ll get a couple seats. In the mean time I plan to go to at least a few games this season. Maybe spend some money for great tickets to one game ($100 or so). Let me know if you want to come to that game or any other! I already have a list of people that want to come to the Angels vs Yankees games, and the Angels vs LA games, but there’s always more room!