Major League Baseball 2K8 360 Impressions

[bsbllstr876]

No spring training...

What's baseball without spring training?

[TheLetterZ]

Let me try to answer a few of those quickly.

- Hit variety: We didn't spend much time actually playing the game. We played maybe one full inning, so I don't have real observations of my own here. But we discussed it in-depth and it should be better this year for reasons I will discuss in my writeup.

- I'll get to online stuff in the writeup but I'll say now that I'm pleased that they have added button press controls-only and strikes-only lobbies. Hopefully the latter will weed out some of the unrealistic players from random online games.

- I played the 360 version.

- Presentation: I'm told there's a greater variety of commentary this year. Not sure about camera angles but fielding seemed easier than last year. It's been awhile since I've played 2K7 but maybe the camera not as zoomed as last year?

- You can't save replays.

- Fielding controls have been tweaked this year. Spectacular plays will be more difficult and rare. This includes wall climbs.

[bigfnjoe96]

Thanks for the quick write-up Matt. Here's hoping KUSH/Blue Castle fixed the problem with the Line-ups, since we can't manually edit them ourselves. I'm really encouraged by your remarks about how fluid the animations look & feel. Matt would you say the bumping-up of the frame rate is what is helping the animations look so fluid & did you notice frame rate drops during your time with the game...

[Blitzburgh]

Quote: Originally Posted by bigfnjoe96

Thanks for the quick write-up Matt. Here's hoping KUSH/Blue Castle fixed the problem with the Line-ups, since we can't manually edit them ourselves. I'm really encouraged by your remarks about how fluid the animations look & feel. Matt would you say the bumping-up of the frame rate is what is helping the animations look so fluid & did you notice frame rate drops during your time with the game...

It seems we are getting a bit of contradicting info...I thought I remember from the BB phone intereview or something that he said we can edit the lineups and rotation of the CPU contolled teams? Also, one person said there is in game saves and the other said there wasn't? Now I am confused! haha

[TheLetterZ]

- Frame rate looked good.

- Oh, and about the lineups. I was told they worked hard on improving the AI logic for the roster management. We hear that often but hopefully there will be noticeable improvements this year.

[ExtremeGamer]

Quote: Originally Posted by Art1bk

yeah 60fps, smooth animations, no herky jerkey movements. Yeah your right it sounds like no improvements

We'll see on the actual game when it's in our hands. Sounds like he only played one inning and the rest was discussed.

This happens every year, everyone gets all hyped for MLB 2K, and it's a huge disappointment. I hope I'm wrong, but it sounds like the team worked more on the playing card system than actually improving the gameplay.

[TheLetterZ]

- I saw the in-game saves button.

- We tried editing the lineups and rotations for CPU-controlled teams and it was impossible.

[bigfnjoe96]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheLetterZ

- Frame rate looked good. - Oh, and about the lineups. I was told they worked hard on improving the AI logic for the roster management. We hear that often but hopefully there will be noticeable improvements this year.

Nice...BTW, sorry bout your wildcats last night