MLB 2K12 Impressions (Kotaku)

[Flaxseed Oil]

Kotaku's Owen Good has posted his MLB 2K12 impressions. He also talks to Mark Little, the game's senior producer, about the expiring contract.

Quote:

New presentational details are still being added into MLB 2K12, ones that will advise you in how to pitch to certain batters (if you're paying attention to Gary Thorne and analysts Steve Phillips and John Kruk) and, as booth audio only aren't features that you can miss if you have a twitchy finger and button-through things out of get-on-with-it habit. The game's multi-stage commentary means the announcers interrupt themselves so they're not behind on the action, something every sports game needs to implement. The problem is I still saw too many interstitial camera shots, particularly between innings, that seemed to linger on voids in the field or blurred-out parts of the crowd. While the catcher has a new set of behaviors, the same old batter-up animation begins each hitter's introduction. These are the kinds of things that get in the way of playing the game for long stretches. I fear that people are going to kill the game for its looks and some of its repetitive visuals, and allege that it's a warmed over version of last year's game. It isn't though. 2K Sports has meaningfully innovated on the gameplay, and if it holds up in the long run, I think it should push other developers to try something similar, as analog controls in MLB 2K10 certainly pushed MLB 11 The Show to include them there.

[ML]

Quote: Originally Posted by Flaxseed Oil

http://kotaku.com/5878072/mlb-2k12-r...s-final-pitch/ Summary: graphics look the same, pitching and hitting are improved. Probably the last 2k baseball game

The graphics look nicer judging from whats been released already, but it could be the new lighting or something. They also said they revamped some of the fielding and it's supposively had a more realistic touch put into it. I'm sort of hoping if they go out, they go out with a bang, not a product that they put little effort into.

[The Bimmer]

Agreed, very honest article. To me graphics are not my top priority when making a decision. The description of the pitching strategy alone sounds like it is worth the price of admission.

[dodgerblue]

Very honest sounding review. The reviewer sounds very cautious and makes some statements that don't give me a lot of optimism about any graphical improvements.

I really was hoping that 2K would put it together, but it sounds like they didn't have the desire or resources to make it happen.

[Blzer]

I'm not so sure that I agree with this system:

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Also, the game's going to vary your pitch effectiveness depending on what happened with it in the game. It's results-driven, and it implies a pitcher's confidence or lack thereof in his stuff. If a fastball gets belted for a hard out, there'll be no penalty even if it was a close escape or a spectacular play. But if it's blooped cheaply for a single and a run scores, it will be dinged, with a red number showing its new rating and representing a decrease.

You can ask any pitcher in the majors which kind of pitch they get frustrated over. They will tell you that if they give up a home run on a flat curveball hanging over the belt, yeah they'll beat themselves up over it because they know they shouldn't have thrown it there; but I guarantee you that every pitcher in the world absolutely despises when their best stuff results in a broken bat duck-snort single the other way that "drives" the men in scoring position, because they knew that the batter had no right to earn a hit in that scenario.

That said, while a pitcher may be angry with lowered confidence in a situation like that, it should have no effect on that fastball or cutter that he threw to that hitter in that situation. Meanwhile, if a hitter gets, say, robbed of a home run or extra bases, a pitcher will credit his outfielder and be very thankful that his pitch didn't result in what it probably deserved to result in. As a result, that pitch should now be inferior. Someone just shelled him, so they're seeing it well. Any hitter in baseball will tell you that they'll take those Texas-leaguer singles for the average boost, but it's not wise to look for results when at-bat, but to look for good contact.

Anyway, I just disagree with the way they are going about that system.

[peigone]

Not sure why you would say it's probably their last game, unless one considers 100% supposition to be factual on some level. What I don't get is the statement that "these games are built on the batter-picther matchups." Pitching yes, hitting, no. Not until they offer a hitting system with actual depth and realism.

I'm also completely uninterested in any game that forces me to play it a certain way. If I want to throw 100% fastballs, I don't want the ball turning red and my fastball losing it's effectiveness because of it. Have to be able to turn that nonsense off as no dev ever gets that momentum/confidence/effectiveness stuff right in their games.

[Blzer]

By the way, want to improve pitching difficulty? Take a page out of World Series Baseball 2K3, and give an option to hide the pitching cursor. I know they say they listen to their fans, but this small, small thing gets overlooked year in and year out. It's the one thing that can make that pinpoint pitching not so pinpoint, and they fail to give us this option every single year.

[The Bimmer]

Well regardless of whether or not the new pitching mechanic is accurate or not, the fact that the game is trying to represent a stochastic process (analysis of information) before you make a decision to select a pitch is the appealing part of this to me. I have always felt baseball video games were more of a deterministic process like rolling dice, i.e. Strat-o-matic baseball. The more ways a baseball game can provide decisions to be made based on data, then let the probabilities and variables play out, the more of my interest you will get. I believe moving forward this kind of approach will be copied and perfected regardless of whether 2k13 ever comes out.