MLB 2K5 from 2K Sports

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Season Play: There is a very good season mode in this game for people who love playing that. You can control as many teams as you want and have complete control over your team, trades and transactions. You can choose to play each game of the schedule, or sim parts of the schedule or all of it. For this review, I simmed the entire season and the Cubs won the World Series over Boston in seven games.

During the season, the league and team leaders are kept for you. When the season was completed, awards were given out for MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, etc. I think it’s a very good part of this game but the next time I do this, I’ll have a more active part in my season.

Other Game Modes:

Home run Derby: Pick two guys and go at it! I liked it because it helped with my hitting a little.

Tournament: Get a group of people and have a quick playoff in tournament style to determine the champ.

Gamecast: In this mode, the CPU plays against itself and you sim the game while watching the progress. At any time during the game you can jump in and play the game and then leave it again if you want.

Situation: Create your own little mess here. You want bases loaded, two outs in the ninth and you want your best reliever in to get the final out? Here’s where you can do just that. I picked Boston at Baltimore. Bases full of Sox, and the Orioles leading 1 – 0 in the ninth. Jorge Julio came in, threw one pitch to Johnny Damon and he grounded to first and that was that.

Franchise: It’s your team so you can run it your way. You got your own budget and payroll to deal with. For those of you that like this kind of stuff in a game, you can really get involved in here. For me, I won’t even bother. I got this for individual games, seasons and online play.

GM Career: In way this is similar to the franchise mode, but in here you are the general manager of a baseball team. You have to meet certain goals for the season. You have to hire minor league personnel. You release and sign players. Looking around in this area you really can get lost in here. It is pretty involved. For those of you that always wanted to run a ball club, this was made just for you.

Here are some screens of the GM mode in action.

Hiring a minor league pitching coach:

Goals for that aspiring general manager in you:

Finally, this is what happens when a goal isn’t met. You’ll hear about it:

In Your Face: This is the last game mode and this is also the most arcade like of them all. You play a game and you have to meet some challenges to earn something called a “face point”. When you earn these, you can take away some abilities of your opponent like not making them run as fast, etc. The good thing about this feature is that if you don’t like it, it can be easily ignored.

See what I mean?

The Skybox area: The Skybox is the baseball version of “The Crib” from ESPN 2k5 football. You will get some use out of it because this is where you go to unlock your retro uniforms and old ballparks that you earn. You can also unlock sound FX and hidden goodies. What they are, I have no idea since I haven’t got that far.

Believe it or not, there’s also a game room in there. Once again, you have to unlock the items to use them. There’s an air hockey game, a dart board and video games. Why this is in a baseball game is beyond me. But since it doesn’t affect game play, I don’t care. There are three different skybox areas to gain access to, but when you first get the game, you are only allowed to go into Skybox #1. What is in the other two I can’t share with you because I don’t know myself yet.

Air hockey anyone?


Final thoughts:

The gameplay in this game is fantastic. From the way a double play is turned to the way you can see a curveball break, this game will make the hard core gamer happy. When you stay away from the little gimmicks like the K-zone pitching, you’ll have a game that you’ll be playing again and again. The sliders in this game are plenty. People like SerialMike, someone who’s pretty good with sliders, can probably tweak the settings to bring out the very best in this game. The audio is very good. Background organ music, hecklers, the crowd, etc. Everything combined gave me an actual game experience. Although the sound of the ball hitting the bat wasn’t 100% correct, it didn’t bother me that I had to put the game down. The graphics were good. Were they as nice as EA? Maybe not. But that would be something you would decide for yourself. The way I see it is that the graphics took nothing away from this game. I thought they were very good. The presentation of this game was excellent. The announcing team of Miller and Morgan was easy on the ears and it was a huge upgrade than last year. The camera angles were very good with close ups of the players and fans, just like a TV broadcast. This game makes you want to pick it up and play it again and again. With the X-Box Live feature, you can play online against your friends and your friends here in the forum. If anyone needs any help getting the right equipment for X-Box live, I would suggest asking weazmaddux, who was very helpful in getting me hooked up online. Finally, the price. At $19.99, you can’t go wrong. I hope this review has helped a little and that you enjoy the game.

Thanks to:
Bleeding Cubby Blue, for allowing me to do this review for our fine board.
SerialMike, for the sliders in last year’s game that were very helpful. I hope you do them for this one.
Weazmaddux, for the X-box live support. Now I have more people to lose to than ever before.
The Perfect game forum members, for any comment on this. Good or bad.
The New York Yankees, for having something to cheer for all the time. (Except for the 1980’s of course)
Finally, my wife, for not bothering me when I was playing the X-box and writing this review. Thank you.