At Home Plate - Review: Major League Baseball 2K10 (PC)

Written by Bjoern Hartig (Contact & Archive) on April 23, 2010

If you have been looking for a MLB baseball game on the PC, you did not have much of a choice recently. While the Playstation 3 has the (apparently*) great MLB The Show franchise, ever since EA Sports lost the official license in 2005, on the PC, you were left with either (albeit great) simulation games like Out Of The Park (OOTP X review, OOTP 11 review upcoming) or Baseball Mogul (review) or with the old MVP Baseball games from EASports, which, while great and kept alive by an active modding community, were getting a little long in the tooth.

Then in 2009, a new player entered the scene: 2KSports released Major League Baseball 2k9, playable on pretty much all major platforms (Xbox, PS3, PS2, PSP, Wii), including - finally - the PC. Unfortunately, the game disappointed all along the line. Reviewers criticized the abundance of bugs and complained that the game generally appeared half-finished. Now it is one year later and the new version 2k10 has hit the shelves. Can it do better than its predecessor*?

* I should note that I neither own a PS3 nor any of the earlier versions of the 2KSports franchise, so all comparisons made are to the old MVP games, which in my mind are still the benchmark for PC players. Also, let me say that you need to play the game with a gamepad. The keyboard could be used, but it really is not fun to do so.

Graphics:
The game looks pretty much like you would expect from a PC game today. The stadiums are beautiful and the player models look good. Not great, mind you, but good enough. Most regulars from the majors are recognizable, although I would have expected the quality of the faces to be better by now. Also, the crowd mostly consists of individuals and they even jump up for foul balls - nicely done. All in all, the graphics will certainly not keep you from enjoying this game.

I did not encounter the graphical bugs that I read about in other reviews, but I guess these things are often as much the fault of the graphic card then the game itself. My Radeon 5770 at least performed perfectly. The only glitches I encountered were during the automatic swing replays. They did show something, just not the batter. My guess is that these problems are due to the different resolutions on the PC, but since you would turn the automatic swing replay off sooner than later anyways, I would not make too much it.

Animations:
Pitching, hitting and fielding animations overall are fluid and realistic. As is the standard today, batters have different motions that they go through before and after pitches and they really resemble their real life role models. What I did not care for were the throws by the outfielders. Often, it looks like they are unloading hard to third, but then the ball goes into second, which looks just weird. Infielders, however, usually display a nice motion on their throws to first or on double plays. Overall, I would rate animations a little above average.

Hitting:
There are two main hitting modes: contact and power. For contact hitting, you press the right analog stick up, while for power hitting, you have to press it down first, then up. The more fluid the motion, the more powerful the swing. There is also the possibility to make a defensive swing when you are trying to protect the plate by pressing the stick either to the left or to the right, which works quite well.

With the left stick, you can aim your swing up and down or left and right in order to pull or go opposite field. Alternatively, when activating the batter's eye function, you can focus on a particular spot of the strike zone, waiting for the right pitch.

Even though I was used to just pressing a single button to swing, I like the way MLB2k10 does it better. The only drawback is that the game has no check swings implemented. Still, hitting is fun and with precisely adjustable difficulty settings, it never gets frustrating.

Pitching:
In order to throw a pitch, you aim with the left stick, then press the right stick in one direction, wait until the right moment, then follow a movement pattern depending on the pitch thrown. For fastballs and changeups, it is just straight up or down, but it gets more complicated for breaking balls. When pitching from the stretch or with high pitch counts, you need to be quicker, which is more difficult, plus, when you have given up a couple of hits, your pitcher gets rattled and it becomes more difficult to aim for the edge of the strike zone.

The only gripe I have about the pitching system is that it is too easy to aim the fastball when behind in the count, so you rarely walk people. Still, this is much more fun than just pressing and releasing a button, especially since your pitch selection will more closely resemble real life now.

Fielding:
Fielding is largely assisted, so you are mostly restricted to run down fly balls and decide to which base to throw, but I never cared much for manual fielding control beside that anyway. Earlier versions of the game suffered from too many mistakes by the AI, but that clearly has been addressed. In fact, I have yet to see any defensive errors in the game, so the programmers seem to have done a little too much good here.

Baserunning:
The AI baserunning is okay and it steals bases at an appropriate rate. I played mostly with Mike Napoli catching, so I did not catch too many runners (only one to be frank), but it was close enough that a better thrower could have gotten some of them. Stealing a base yourself, however, is hard. Very, very hard. You need to get a really big lead and even then only the fastest runners have any chance of making it at all. I have not tried to tweak the difficulty settings with respect to stealing yet though, but personally, I am fine without stealing myself.

Presentation:
It is impressive how much color commentary is available in the game. You really feel like watching a real game on the TV. That being said though, sooner than later things are repeating themselves and - just like on TV - more often than not what the guys in the both say is a little bit stupid. Like when they mention that the Angels displayed confidence in the abilities of Kendry Morales by not re-signing Mark Teixeira - ignoring that LA actually offered Teixeira $160 million to stay. So once the initial novelty has worn off, you will most likely turn commentaries off for good.

What I liked was the flashing of win probability changes after big plays. At the same time, crowning a "clutch performer of the game" is a feature that 2KSports had better delayed until next year. While the game occasionally gets it right, the majority of the time is chooses someone who is the definition of un-clutch. In a game in which my team scored 10 runs on 20 hits, it chose someone who went 1-5 with no RBI. Seriously?

Artificial Intelligence:
Most of the time, the AI is doing a good job. Sometimes, outfielders throw to third on a flyout with a retreating runner on first, but that is not really a big deal. Baserunners sometimes are a little aggressive and since your throws are very (too) accurate, you can often get an out on the bases, but the frequency feels just about right. I feel like I am having a little too much success on pick-offs though, but you can tweak this, too.

One thing I noticed though is that the AI seems to stick too long with starters. Sometimes way too long. In the game mentioned above, I had scored eight runs after five innings, yet the pitcher was allowed to stay in the game until the eighth inning, giving up two more runs and throwing more than 160 pitches. It is not always that drastic, but 120 pitches is more the norm than the exception.

Miscellaneous:
The menu structure is simply awful. Options change places all the time and are not particularly intuitive ordered. Also, the way you use the controller to navigate the menu feels weird to me, but maybe that is because I do not own a console.

In the game, there are several drills to learn the different aspects of the game. Unfortunately, the controller does not work in them. No reaction, nothing. Using the keyboard is no option, because you just do not want to play the game with the keyboard when you have a controller. You just do not want to play with the keyboard, period. Not sure if I had missed the drill modes if they had not been included, but when they simply do not work, it reflects poorly on the whole game.

There is a "My Player" mode allowing you to create a player and guide him to the majors through the minors. You receive points for getting hits, scoring runs, making plays on defense and executing plays like hit-and-runs, then use those points to improve your skills. It can be a lot of fun if you are a pitcher, but for position players, the system is still quite flawed. For example, even if you are becoming a big and slow slugging first baseman, you still have to accomplish some baserunning feats before you get the call-up to the Bigs.

Overall:
No, MLB2K10 is far from being perfect. Yes, there are some obvious, sometimes maddening bugs, but none that really take the joy out of the game. The pitching and hitting mechanics are awesome and the rest really is solid enough. If you just want to play some good old hardball on the PC, you can overlook the weaknesses and have a good time with this product. I give it 3 balls out of 4.

AtHomePlate.com writes its reviews with the following system:
Four Balls: An exceptional book that truly earns a walk straight to the local book story to get a copy.
Three Balls: This book stands out from its peers and is highly recommended.
Two Balls: A book worth reading/owning and is usually above average.
One Ball: This book has something to say but is nothing special.

What's been your experience with MLB2K10? Let us hear your feedback below.

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Comments (66)

Still my favorite game on the PC today. The new version just did not do it for me.

Runs really well even on my useless laptop!

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