MLB 2K9 Demo Impressions

[Houston]

.


- What's up with the proportions on this game. In the beginning of the game it showed my bat boy (I can only assume) standing in front of my dugout, with two players from my team standing behind him. Tell me why the players are literally twice as big as him. I mean, I'm talking about heads and everything. I was like wtf?
- Tell me why, when Shane Victorino hit a bunt that went straight down first base line to my pitcher, he picked up the ball and decided to run side by side with Victorino, racing him to the bag, even though I was pushing the stick in the direction of Victorino so he could tag him.

.- Everything looks so arcade like

I don't see what you mean, if anything this game is too sim for me.

[The Messenger]

Haha are you serious? I would give this WAY over a 6.0. I've played the Show, and 2K, and the Show is the better game, but this demo looks impressive to me. I guess its my opinion, but I'd give this demo at least a 7.5-8. Graphics terrible? The stadiums, and players (from afar) look great.

"- Graphics compared to the show are terrible."

I lol'd when the baserunner left a dust cloud that appeared on the screen as little brown circles slowly rolling to the right of the screen.

The faces are pretty good, but the players don't stand out. It's literally like NBA Live honestly. The players are just there, where as on 2k9 you can feel the players and they feel like real nba players. That sounds weird, but idk.

And Houston, if this is sim to you, you must not watch much baseball.

[The Messenger]

Everyone I've talked to has liked it. I think it plays like NBA 2K9. Oh well. I'm happy with it.

I don't want ya'll to hate it lol. If you guys like it that's cool. Just my opinion.

[chazmaniandevil]

Everyone I've talked to has liked it. I think it plays like NBA 2K9. Oh well. I'm happy with it.

lol everyone on operation sports was ripping it a new butthole

[killgod]

I was flipping through various Twitter pages.....

Came across pastapadre's.


To quote him directly "Sounds like MLB 2k9's franchise mode is totally broken."

"Big name free agents aren't being signed"

"Tim Linecum is a free agent after the first season and no one signed him"


lolz. 2K failed again.

[celtsxpatsxsox]

Ah god... I'll be honest. I'd kill myself if I was a big baseball fan and didn't have a PS3. This demo is completely horrible. From what I can tell, this will be a step back from even 2k8.

Pros
- I liked the camera angle.
- Graphics were improved from last years but...

Cons
- Graphics compared to the show are terrible.
- What's up with the proportions on this game. In the beginning of the game it showed my bat boy (I can only assume) standing in front of my dugout, with two players from my team standing behind him. Tell me why the players are literally twice as big as him. I mean, I'm talking about heads and everything. I was like wtf?
- They killed the pitching. If you got used to the pitching in 2k8, you won't like the pitching on here. In 2k8 you throw a lot of meatballs if you don't know how to pitch right, but over time you learn how to throw the pitches perfect. To me, 2k8's pitching was the most fun, now it looks like crap.
- Tell me why, when Shane Victorino hit a bunt that went straight down first base line to my pitcher, he picked up the ball and decided to run side by side with Victorino, racing him to the bag, even though I was pushing the stick in the direction of Victorino so he could tag him.
- Everything looks so arcade like. It feels like I'm playing this game on one of the arcade systems at Chuck E. Cheese. I expected to look over and see some kids playing the Hungry Hungry Hippo game next to me....
- Batters swung first pitch every time.

I really don't know what to say. This is comparable to NBA Live at this point.

Demo Ratings:
MLB 09: The Show - 9.5
MLB 2k9: 6.0

First I dont know how you can say it is a step down from 2k8 this year. I mean 95% of people would agree it is better than last year.

I played the show demo for the first time last night and from what I can say 2k's graphics are not better than the show's they are not terrible compared to them. The one thing that I liked about the show is the lighting. 2k has better player models and better signature styles which is a big plus for me in baseball games.

The thing about the bat boy is just nit picking. I am sure I could nit pick at the show and find something like that wrong with it.

They killed pitching? The meatball was the most complained abut thing in terms of pitching from MLB 2k8. In baseball there is know time you throw an actual meatball like that when pitching. If I am pitching in real life and I go to throw a curve and mess up it is going to be hanging curve and not break which is what is was like in the demo. You can always go back to 2k8 pitching way if yo want to. I guess some people are to lazy to hit pause and change one setting.

umm... did you just try throwing the ball to first?

The reason it feels arcadey is because it is on arcade mode(easier difficulty) to please all gamers. The casual gamer community makes up a hell of a lot more than the sim/realistic community. I know for sure a 9 or 10 year old kid is going to want the baseball game where you can hit more homeruns than a game where he is bearly beating he cpu. Its the same reason why there are more freestyle madden players then sim madden players.

Now with that being said this is how I would grade both demos
Show 09-9.1
MLB 2k9-8.0

[chazmaniandevil]

how could lincecum even be a FA? he isnt eligible until 2013 or something

[celtsxpatsxsox]

I have read on 2ksports that there is already a patch to fix the franchise bugs and some other issues as well which will as soon as you put the game in so you wont have to experience any of these issues.

[Goober]

I was flipping through various Twitter pages.....

Came across pastapadre's.


To quote him directly "Sounds like MLB 2k9's franchise mode is totally broken."

"Big name free agents aren't being signed"

"Tim Linecum is a free agent after the first season and no one signed him"


lolz. 2K failed again.

This game just went from a buying on the 3rd, to waiting a week to see how the patch goes. Franchise mode is the biggest thing for me.

[The Messenger]

I love how people are being fanboys cause they don't have a PS3. The thing about the bat boy isn't nit picking, it's showing that 2k doesn't give a shit. I noticed this right away when I played, why didn't they?

Secondly, why would I throw the ball to first? Are you stupid? Why would any real life player risk throwing a ball away when they could tag the person who's right next to them? That's retarded as shit.

2K does not have better player models. How can you even say that?

The Show's models are damn near perfect. Find me one thing wrong with the player models in The Show? If you can't do that, then you can't say 2k9's models are better. They aren't. Everything is robotic and everything is a canned animation.

The thing about the pitching last year is it made it more interactive. It also made it so you would have to learn to be good at the game, rather than picking it up and throwing perfect games. That's my only gripe with the show. The pitching is button mashing on the show and I don't like that. As long as you know the game of baseball, you can pitch a perfect game in The Show from the second you pick up the game. In 2k8, you had to get good at pitching. After you played around 10 or 15 games consistently, you weren't throwing any meatballs.

And the easy difficulty doesn't make the game arcade like. I was talking about how it looks. I don't want to be playing a game that feels like it's targeted at little kids.

And since you say this arcade like gameplay makes it more attractive to younger generations, tell me why everyone wants The Show? If the show is so sim and ultra-realistic (and that isn't good for all audiences like you said), then why does almost everyone who owns a PS3 buy The Show? And why are there people who buy PS3s, even when they were still $600, buy it just for The Show?

There is no argument that The Show is better than 2K, and that's not the point I'm trying to get across because even the die-hard 2K fanboys will admit that. I'm wondering how you can defend the developers for being lazy pieces of shit by telling me to "just throw the ball to first" when my God damn pitcher is running side-by-side with the baserunner?

And just so you know, it wouldn't let me throw the ball to first. It was a stuck canned animation. I was just running side-by-side with him. I tried for 3 or 4 seconds holding the thumbstick in the direction of Victorino and the animation just kept going. Then i tried throwing and he wouldn't do it. What ended up happening was Victorino beat Kazmir to first base by like half a step. That was also funny, cause they were running side-by-side from about 10 feet down the base line on and Kazmir still barely lost the foot race to Victorino.

[celtsxpatsxsox]

I love how people are being fanboys cause they don't have a PS3. The thing about the bat boy isn't nit picking, it's showing that 2k doesn't give a shit. I noticed this right away when I played, why didn't they?

Secondly, why would I throw the ball to first? Are you stupid? Why would any real life player risk throwing a ball away when they could tag the person who's right next to them? That's retarded as shit.

2K does not have better player models. How can you even say that?

The Show's models are damn near perfect. Find me one thing wrong with the player models in The Show? If you can't do that, then you can't say 2k9's models are better. They aren't. Everything is robotic and everything is a canned animation.

The thing about the pitching last year is it made it more interactive. It also made it so you would have to learn to be good at the game, rather than picking it up and throwing perfect games. That's my only gripe with the show. The pitching is button mashing on the show and I don't like that. As long as you know the game of baseball, you can pitch a perfect game in The Show from the second you pick up the game. In 2k8, you had to get good at pitching. After you played around 10 or 15 games consistently, you weren't throwing any meatballs.

And the easy difficulty doesn't make the game arcade like. I was talking about how it looks. I don't want to be playing a game that feels like it's targeted at little kids.

And since you say this arcade like gameplay makes it more attractive to younger generations, tell me why everyone wants The Show? If the show is so sim and ultra-realistic (and that isn't good for all audiences like you said), then why does almost everyone who owns a PS3 buy The Show? And why are there people who buy PS3s, even when they were still $600, buy it just for The Show?

There is no argument that The Show is better than 2K, and that's not the point I'm trying to get across because even the die-hard 2K fanboys will admit that. I'm wondering how you can defend the developers for being lazy pieces of shit by telling me to "just throw the ball to first" when my God damn pitcher is running side-by-side with the baserunner?

And just so you know, it wouldn't let me throw the ball to first. It was a stuck canned animation. I was just running side-by-side with him. I tried for 3 or 4 seconds holding the thumbstick in the direction of Victorino and the animation just kept going. Then i tried throwing and he wouldn't do it. What ended up happening was Victorino beat Kazmir to first base by like half a step. That was also funny, cause they were running side-by-side from about 10 feet down the base line on and Kazmir still barely lost the foot race to Victorino.

Did I tell you to throw the ball to first? No I didnt. I was asking if you did because I know in some baseball games if you are close enough to the base and you wanna throw it to the base he will run to the base by himself. As for being a fanboy. I have already admitted I would rather have The show then 2k9 but I am not going to dish out $400 on a new game cause that is pretty much what I would be doing. Now when the PS3 drops in price and I get more hours for the Job I just started then I very well could buy a PS3 and then I would have two good baseball games to play from. I would franchise on The Show and play online on 2k9

You are going by what you see on forums and shit. Sports forums probably make up less than 2 percent of the gaming community if that. I would bet they make up under 1 percent. So if you can get a national survey done stating that more people buy a PS3 for the show then I will believe you.

[Yawkey Way]

but..the gaming forums are the people who buy the games and play them. If everyone says they want to get the ps3 or want to get the Show because they have the PS3, wouldn't that paint the picture that yes more people are getting the show/ps3 just for baseball games?

[celtsxpatsxsox]

Gaming forums dont make up the whole video game community though. They make up less than 2 percent.

[celtsxpatsxsox]

I am pretty much just guessing. But I cant see it making a huge chunk of the gaming community.

[The Messenger]

"umm... did you just try throwing the ball to first?"

Could be interpreted either way.

And Chad, I'll look that up next time.