To put it mildly, MLB 2K9 was what some would call…unplayable. So with MLB 2K10 due in stores next week head-to-head with the Sony exclusive, and generally considered superior, MLB The Show, a few of the people responsible for this year’s 2K MLB title got on a conference call to answer some questions about the game. Producer Ben Bishop and Gameplay Designers, Jonathan Rivera and Sean Bailey were the speakers. While MLB 2K10 is due out for almost every system on the planet, the questions mostly pertained to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions.
MLB 2K10 is the first time the Visual Concepts team has had a full development cycle to work on the MLB game since it moved in-house to the 2K Sports studio. The benefits are everywhere you look in this year’s game. The team appears to be most excited about My Player mode, which uses NBA 2K10’s of the same name as its template. In My Player mode, you start as a player in the minor leagues and work him up to the majors. After getting to the majors, you play out as many seasons with that player as you like, but in an interesting twist, you are trying to accomplish the end goal of getting your player into the Hall of Fame. In a Modern Warfare multiplayer like twist, there is a meter called the MLB ETA meter that tells you how close you are to getting called up into the major leagues. To make that meter move, you will have to finish challenges that the game lays out for you. This meter also appears once you make it onto an MLB team to let you know how close you are to making it into the Hall of Fame. Winning the World Series is one of the challenges you must accomplish before you can make it into the Hall of Fame.
Another place where MLB 2K10 and NBA 2K10 are similar is in its dynamic commentary. If a player on your team is just a couple of home runs away from becoming the leading home run hitter in the league, the commentators will note that when that player comes up to bat. This also extends into the MLB Today mode, which pulls its information directly from what’s happening in the actual MLB. If players are injured or the pitching rotation for a team changes, MLB Today mode will reflect that. This however does not bleed over into franchise mode since you are going to want to trade players and play it in your own style, trying to craft the best team you possibly can.
As I mentioned earlier, MLB 2K9 came under a lot of heavy criticism for not only being a bad game, but some people found it downright unplayable. Everything in MLB 2K10 was rewritten, and the game is almost completely overhauled. There are over 200 new animations just for infielders and hundreds more for outfielders. The outfielders are even aware of each other. So you wont see two outfielders in the same “I’m going to catch the ball” stance running towards a falling baseball. You can also pre-load the throw an outfielder will make which will turn the catch and throw into one fluid animation.
The development team also addressed the issue of slow down and bad frame rates that plagued MLB 2K9. They say, of course, that’s all been worked out, and with everything having been rewritten, the game will be more than playable. Let’s hope they are right.
Another big improvement is what 2K Sports is calling Battle at the Plate. Which makes hitting and pitching much more intense than it has ever been previously. The pitching was the focus of the game for the team. They knew they had to nail it; so they made it a completely different experience. Before you throw a pitch, you choose the type of pitch you want to throw, and the game will assist you. If you are trying to throw a curveball, but you gesture into the wrong place, the game will compensate for you. Then after the pitch, an analyzer comes up to show you what you did right or wrong, hopefully making you become a better pitcher.
Pitchers didn’t get all the attention, however, batters got some love from the team too. Batters have a Batter’s Eye rating. Batters who in real life get walked often or maybe only just make it to first base have a higher Batter’s Eye rating. The higher the rating the more often a batter will be able to see what kind of pitch the pitcher is about to throw.
Batters also have a defensive swing, which can be used to purposefully foul out a ball and wear down a pitcher. This makes it easier for the batter to catch a pitcher being lazy and knock one out of the park. This can also be used to make things like sacrifice plays easier.
I’m not much of a baseball fan, so I’ve always wondered how people can play through an actual 162 game season of baseball in a video game. It just doesn’t seem possible to me. So one of the most intriguing features to me is the ability to “super sim” in franchise mode. With super sim if you choose to sim a game and the results don’t seem correct to you, you can go to a specific half inning and start playing the game from that point. Do you think your team should have beat its cross-town rival? Well go back to the inning where it all started to fall apart, take control of your team and guide them to a well earned victory.
It sounds like the team at Visual Concepts and 2K Sports have done everything in their power to make sure that MLB 2K10 is not only a much better game than MLB 2K9, but that it’s the best baseball game on the market. Our own resident baseball expert, Fish, will let us know not only if MLB 2K10 succeeds at being better than its predecessor, but which of this year’s baseball games is superior when he reviews both of them side by side. Look for that article to go up sometime in the next week or so.