Major League Baseball 2K9 Reviews

Review by Oaktown Fan for Major League Baseball 2K9
Rating:
I too am disappointed with this game (fortunately I rented, so saved a lot of money!). My greatest hope for a Wii baseball game was the ability to check your swing if you don’t like the pitch. Unfortunately, they’ve made it more difficult than ever – you have to press two buttons mid-swing to check your swing, and even then they call a strike on appeal at least half the time. It’s very disappointing.

Pitching controls are OK, fielding is OK, but baserunning is terrible (stealing, advancing bases, sliding, etc.) You can shake the remote and nunchuck up and down to run fast, but if you do that on a ball in the gap, it makes you slide into first base and lose your double. Advancing runners is confusing – to advance a singe runner you have to “select” them while they are running (still not sure how to do this) and then press a button to have them advance. Why not just have you press the base that you want a baserunner to advance to? Then all runners ahead of them will automatically advance. It shouldn’t be that complicated, 2k sports!!

I guess I can keep hoping for a Wii-optimized baseball game. It seems the perfect console (minus the graphics

Review by Bplus for Major League Baseball 2K9
Rating:
I’ve been playing this game often enough to overcome the minor problems and overall, I can say that I love it. While this is ultimately a port of the mlb 2k7 I played on xbox, it’s a much better one. I’m angry that it took me six-seven hours to update the rosters manually, but now I’m set to go. Really, this should be a much better game that goes online, but since this is my only system, I’m happy that it doesn’t have the bugs that the xbox 360 version is reported to have.

The fielding is without error and the controls are very responsive. The pitching is fun and it’s a blast to strike out hitters. Batting takes some time, but if you leave your batting cursor in the middle of the strike zone, and then chase it when the pitch arrives, you can get a hit most of the time. Hitting is definitely a challenge, as it should be. Stealing a base is easy and rewarding, even though the manual doesn’t tell you how. You have to select the runner on the d-pad, and then hit b as the pitcher begins his delivery. The only issue I have with control is that on the basepaths, the runners aren’t very responsive and you can’t get out of a pickle. The wii motions are fun, though they keep you from playing more than 3-4 games in a row, which is probably a good thing.

Sure the graphics aren’t much, but the game plays quickly. Since it’s hard to hit and the pitchers are difficult in pro mode, it’s real rewarding when you win.

Some bugs you’ll get used to:

-Playing in franchise mode, you have to set your lineups in the general screen, because changing them in the actual pregame selection does nothing.

-The 2008 stats are missing. Very ridiculous, but playing franchise, you make you’re own stats anyway.

I say its worth picking up once everyone else sells theirs back. Enjoy.