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)

</rant>

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

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.

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

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!