MLB 2K8/The Show

The Game Room
1

Is anyone else pumped for Monday’s release of MLB 2K8 (XBox) and The Show (PS)? I am practically counting down the hours; the baseball season, to me, doesn’t begin with pitchers and catchers–it starts with the release of the video games.

I am the owner of a 360, so I’m going to pick up 2K8. My roommate, however, has a PS3 and he’ll be getting The Show. I didn’t have online access last spring (pitiful, I know), so I didn’t get to read the online reviews for MLB 2K8 until recently; it seemed, to me, that there was a lot of unnecessary hating on it. I really enjoyed it, though; if they make a couple tweaks to this year (so, for instance, 8 homers aren’t hit per game) I think it will extend past the levels MVP reached a couple years ago.

Does anyone else have anything to add? My Phils should be a really interesting team to play with–our offense should be pretty incredible. Also, any Dopers going to be on XBox Live?

2

I’m fired up for it this year as well. I haven’t had a baseball game in a few years and I heard that last year’s had a few flaws, but they’ve been addressed this year.

I’m on Live as I Dixon Tufar I and I’ll be playing as the Tigers.

3

What is the batter pitcher interface? For some reason they give the pitcher extreme precision (or capability of same, if he’s Maddux say) with his pitches, but aren’t they still using that “nine zone” swing box for the hitter? I’d much rather see a transparent on-screen bat which indicates where the hitter will swing. But I dunno exactly how 2k8 handles this, so anyone who knows more can feel welcome to enlighten me.

4

Here you go .

5

OK, I picked MLB 2K8 for the 360 up earlier today.

Early impressions:

*The graphics are unimpressive. I think they’ve actually gotten worse since last year. No players (that I’ve seen so far) look particularly like themselves.

*The pitching is hard to pick up on. 3 games in, and I still don’t seem to have a clue what I’m doing. Instead of in previous games (dating back to MVP, even), pitching is controlled no longer with buttons corresponding to each pitch type, but now entirely with the right analog stick. Again, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and almost every pitch I’ve thrown has tailed right over the middle of the place.

As seems to be the norm for 2K Sports, the instruction manual provides no help with the new pitching mode (I bought NBA 2K8 over the winter, and the instructions were horrible–looking at the internet others seemed to agree, as I noticed that the biggest gripe with the game seemed to be its pitiful instructions). In fact, whoever was in charge of making the instruction manual apparently did not get the memo, as the manual mentions nothing about pitching with the right analog stick–it says “A Button: throw pitch, X Button: throw pitch, etc.” That’s nice, except those are last year’s controls.

*The hitting is better than last year. They’ve clearly made some upgrades in the physics, and so far I haven’t pulled any homers off of outside pitchers, or vice versa. Actually though, I have yet to hit any home runs, but that’s better seems more realistic than last year when, on the first pitch I ever saw, I drilled one with J Roll over the rightfield wall.

*Fielding has also changed to rely entirely on the right analog stick to throw the ball. It’s going to take some getting used to, but it should create more realistic errors. A huge gripe for me is that there doesn’t seem to be a button that will have the fielder run “turbo.” The right trigger, which was last year’s “turbo” button IIRC, now dives; many people, I’m sure, will instinctively push the right trigger in order to chase down a fly and extra-bases will ensue. They need a “turbo” button, and I’m hoping that it’s in the game and I simply haven’t found it yet. (Naturally, the instruction manual provides no help.)

Also, the graphics for fielding are pretty poor. In my first game I gunned down a guy at home, but the catcher did not appear to make a tag. It’s pretty ridiculous.

*I was glad to see that the roster updates were from as recent as 2/28, so Johan Santana is on the Mets, Pedro Feliz is on the Phils, etc. Baseball, with all the injuries and call-ups/send-downs that take place throughout the season, requires continually updated rosters; I hope Sega doesn’t drop the ball on this and will provide us with online updates throughout the season. It’s ridiculous that EA does a good job with this for Madden, but no other sport or game seems to matter.

*Overall opinion: in spite of the so-so graphics and an inability to grasp the pitching, this game still looks very promising. My apartment complex has a shared internet connection, so my bandwidth usually doesn’t allow me to be able to stay logged in for long when the aparment is full. With spring break coming up next week, however, (and with me staying here) I should be online for most of next week. My handle is “ms26”–look for me!

6

Damn you, work!

I may have to ask the girlfriend to wake up early for me and get me the game. Well…crap, I could see if Kroger has it on my trip home.

You on Playstaion or Xbox?

7

I don’t know how I missed this thread initially – I have been chomping at the bits for The Show. I had last year’s version on the PS2 and adored it. I have a PS3 now, I downloaded the demo a couple of weeks ago. I have been drooling all over it.

The Show has some tremendous upgrades from last year, including my favorite part of the game, which is “The Show” itself. The demo only lets you play three innings of Red Sox vs. Rockies, but even that has gotten me excited. And if you’re a stats geek at all, I think you’ll be blown away by what has been added this time around. You can now track all kinds of in-game stats. Things like seeing how your pitcher has fared against lefties or righties or with two outs, etc. You can see where every pitch has gone to every single batter. For someone like me who is mainly about just having fun playing, it is overkill, but I enjoy the fact that I can see those things if I’m just curious. And the season-based statistics are supposed to be equally deep, and I do look at those.

I’m thinking about asking if I can leave work a bit early today so I can go pick it up. :slight_smile: I only wish my TV was hi-def so I could really drool over it properly.

8

Missed the edit window. I wanted to add:

Some of the little things have been improved, too. The fans don’t look nearly as generic and two-dimensional as they did last year. The fan reactions have improved, too. You can even see things like fans tossing around beach balls, and when a foul ball goes into the stands, the fans nearest to it will actually jump/dive for the ball. Also, last year, if you left your controller alone for a while during defensive play, the game would go into a mode where it would just show the fielders standing around. Now, it’s like there’s a real time-out on the field. You’ll see runners chatting with infielders and the first-base coach talking to the umpire. You’ll even see (I’m not entirely sure this is a good thing) players spit from time to time.

The fieldings physics seem to have improved quite a bit as well. Players look like they’re actually stepping on the ground rather than floating. Outfielders take realistic hop-steps while going through throwing motions. Infielders will pump and double-pump before tossing out a runner if they have time.

The pitcher-catcher interaction is just as good as last year from what I can tell. Catchers give suggestions based on knowledge of the batter and how well the pitcher is handling his pitches, and the pitcher shakes off signs in a realistic manner. It looks to me like the ball comes off the pitcher’s hand in a more realistic manner than previously, as well. And although I haven’t seen it in the demo, I have read that mound visits, which were mere window dressing in the last game, will actually involve real interaction with the game now where pitchers will have to respond to inquiries. I’m not sure how that’s going to work, but I like the sound of it.

Even the announcing seems improved (I assume this is more a function of the larger capacity of the Blu-ray game disk, but I didn’t have last year’s PS3 version of the game to compare against). The announcers make much more situationally-based comments which makes the game seem much more intelligent. I still hate Rex Hudler, but what can you do?

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XBox 360.

And Asimovian, after having read about The Show, I’m pretty pissed that I’m limited to 360 and its “generic” fans. Who commentates in that game, do you know? Is it Jon Miller/Joe Morgan, like in 2K?

10

I don’t care about the generic fans. It’d be nicer to have them all perfectly animated, but that’s an acceptable trade-off.

Add me to your Friends List.

11

I picked up The Show today. It’s quite good but I suck badly at controlled batting. And “The Show” mode is fairly aggravating to me mainly because they completely flip-flop which button corresponds to which base when fielding only for this mode. They never tell you this and the manual is basically useless at explaining ANYTHING. I don’t understand how to control my batter to hit a grounder. Everything I’ve hit has been a fly ball or line drive. It’s also not clear how the pitching works because as soon as you have a runner on base all the sudden your meter doesn’t work the same anymore. It’s about 2000% faster and much harder to hit with any precision. None of this is explained anywhere in the game. There is really very little instruction ANYWHERE. I guess they expect that you played 07 but I didn’t. I played MLB 2K7 last year and switched to this one after the demo wowed me.

Reviews for 2K8 are barely mediocre while reviews for The Show are all pretty high so I guess I made the right choice, but I wish there was some sort of instructions with it.

There should at least be a batting cage, pitching cage and homerun derby, which this game has none of.

12

I’ve just put in a few more hours of 2K, and (after getting the hang of the pitching a little better) it’s a fine game. I think that the “critics” were a little tough on it.

That’s my biggest problem with video game magazines, web sites, etc.: the people reviewing the games, generally, are people whose favorite games seem to be along the lines of “Halo.” Video game consoles, for me, are used exclusively for sports games. I buy Madden and MLB’s game every season; sometimes I’ll throw in an NBA game or a college sports game. I have no interest in anything besides sports. The video game review media should recognize that there are people like me (I imagine I’m not alone), and have people who review games interested exclusively in sports.

I think that would make a lot of sports game reviews more accurate.

13

Yeah. I’m betting that the avg game reviewer can’t really appreciate (or understand) some of the big stat tracking features and franchise stuff in these types of games. Hell, I can’t understand alot of the stat stuff.

How is that Topps card thing in 2K8? That almost swayed me becuase it sounded like fun to collect them and trade them online.

14

Matt Vaskersian (sp?), Dave Campbell and Rex Hudler. I’d rather have your commentators because these three get annoying after awhile (especially since I had to listen to them all last year with '07), but I’m still reasonably impressed with how they respond to the situations at hand in the game.

The Road to the Show mode is FUN, Cubsfan’s arguments notwithstanding. It’s true that all of the directions for throwing are reversed, but it didn’t take me terribly long to get used to it. And yes, the sped-up pitching meter was also part of last year’s game. It’s supposed to better imitate the pressure of pitching from the stretch and having to deal with baserunners. I’m not sure what to tell you if you don’t like it, but it makes sense to me. I know that there’s another method for pitching that doesn’t involve the same meter, but I haven’t used it, so I don’t know if that would help you or not.

I am very bummed, however, that after a long evening of working my way through Spring Training playing left field and managing a .296 average with some quality defense, the best contract I could get is $50,000 to be a bench player on the AA team. This does not bode well. Oh well. The Jacksonville Suns shall be my springboard as I dive forward into a certain Hall of Fame career! Or so I hope.

I’ll probably create my Road to the Show pitcher on Thursday or sometime next week. I am going out of town this weekend, and I’m going to be very sad to have left behind the game for several days after just buying it. But it’s a long season. :slight_smile:

15

Just an update for those that haven’t purchased one game yet.

I went and traded The Show 08 for MLB 2K8 because the online play in The Show was laggy.

BIG MISTAKE.

Holy crap this game is terrible. The graphics are WORSE than 2K7 to me. There is very little batter control. It’s basically swing-at-everything-all-the-time. The graphics are HIDEUOUS and the glitchy as a mofo. Twitching and hitching and whatnot all the time. Wow. It is terrible. I should have kept the show as the graphics are LEAPYEARS ahead of 2K8 and the gameplay is SO much tighter. THe presentation puts 2K8 to shame.

Hell, in 2K8 they don’t even have updated photos from last year. So Soriano is still wearing a NAtionals hat and Giovanni Soto has no picture.

I’m going to have to go BACK and get the Show again and eat the $$ I wasted basically renting this game.

AVOID MLB 2K7 at ALL costs, especially if you have a PS3.

16

You mean 2K8.
So far, I’m not so bad with it. I haven’t got so deep into it. I’m starting to get a feel for the pitching finally. I don’t care so much if there’s an old picture or no picture there. That’s a minor thing. Then again, I don’t particularly care if the players don’t look completely like themselves either.

Apparently, I’m just not that picky. Hm.

17

Don’t play The Show. Trust me. It will bring out the half-assedness of 2K8. It’s just so much better it’s hard to describe.

So far I’ve been unable to get an online game going in 2K8 so the main reason I made the trade didn’t even happen.

I do like the pitching actually. At least if I could play against another person I would. In real life pitchers don’t throw strikes at will for the whole game so the pitch stick makes it a little more realistic.

That’s true that the pictures are a minor thing, which is the reason why it sticks out so much. I can go to MLB.com and see the correct pictures. Could they not do that? Or were they too lazy to make the changes? And for some reason they dulled all the colors on this game compared to lat years. I think it truly looks like a PS2 or Xbox game.

18

I don’t have or intend to get a PlayStation 3, so I’m safe.

I think I really like the way the pitch stick is implemented and why it’s implemented, which is so you can’t pick the corners with pinpoint accuracy every time.

I dunno. Like I said, it’d be okay, but it’s not worth it to bitch about the pictures. Besides, when I get the game down and start work on the franchise mode, after 15 years, no current players are going to be there, so they’ll all be generic faces.

19

I’ve never done franchise mode on any ball game. It seems too daunting. How long does it take you to go through say 10 years of a franchise?

20

Haven’t done it in baseball. I haven’t had a baseball game in years.

For Madden, it depends if you simulate the games and do all the roster management yourself. I’d expect the same for baseball. 162 games is a loooooot of games to play.

I would think that a couple seasons could be simulated and free agency could be done in a couple hours.
As soon as I get the controls down a little more, I’ll start playing a season. The problem with baseball games in franchise modes tended to be free agency. Since there’s no salary cap, there’s be some arbitrary “desire” meter that would show how badly a free agent wanted to be on your team. Of course, after you won 120 games and cruised through the playoffs without a loss, you’d think that you could pick whatever you want, right? Nope.