Major League Baseball 2K9 Demo Available, Post Your Impressions Here

CONTROLS
Let me preface this by saying that the default controls on the demo are almost definitely not the ones I plan on using when playing the actual game, which releases next Tuesday, March 3rd. As far as I could tell, the default controls were “influence hitting” and the pitching mechanic from MLB 2K8, but dumbed-down so that you don’t have to time the release of your pitch.

If you don’t know what “influence hitting” is, think back to MVP 2005. In that game, you could try to hit the ball in the air or on the ground, and you could try to push or pull it by aiming the left thumbstick into any of nine zones (picture the obnoxious BK Hot Zone they show on Fox, but it’s invisible). In MVP, you could hit a low pitch into the air, and you could pull an outside pitch, but you usually got a much better result by going with the pitch, taking an outside pitch the opposite way, and driving high pitches into the air. It was a fantastic hitting system, and MLB 2K9 wisely copied it.

Come next Tuesday, however, I will most likely be using the nifty-looking cursor system, which looks to be a real challenge, by forcing you to aim a bat-shaped cursor at the pitch, and trying to get you to hit it off the “sweet spot.” I have a feeling the cursor hitting mechanic will add a lot of hit variety to the game.

I loved the pitching mechanic from MLB 2K8. It was the only pitching mechanic which remained relatively difficult even after a lot of practice. Each pitch had a certain “gesture” that you had to do with the right thumbstick. As you start your gesture, a meter fills until you complete your gesture, at which point the meter shrinks until you release your gesture. If you pull it off well, you throw a good pitch. If you don’t, your pitch will miss its location or won’t be as effective. If you REALLY screw up, you throw about an 83-mph meatball, which was inordinately stupid. MLB 2K9 eliminated the meatballs (thank God), and the default controls removed the third part of the pitching mechanic, where you had to time your release. In the final game, you will still have the option of using the exact same pitching mechanic as 2K8, which I will be doing.

With all of that said, I used the default controls for six innings of Tampa Bay-Philadelphia. They do not allow you to substitute players EDIT: (apparently, you CAN substitute players, but I have no idea how to do so), modify your lineup, or have any idea what the controls do. And I didn’t. But I did take control of Cole Hamels for the three innings of my first “game.”

PRESENTATION
The first thing that is going to grab you once you start the game is the presentation. 2K9 finally jettisons the tired, awful commentary of Joe Morgan and Jon Miller, replacing them with Gary Thorne and FORMER G.M. OF THE NEW YORK METS Steve Phillips. Thorne is fantastic, and Phillips is surprisingly not that bad, most likely because a bunch of video game programmers wrote more coherent baseball analysis for him than he can generate on his own.

The commentary was, for the most part, spot-on. Thorne and Phillips not only talk about the game as if they’re there, but they also banter back and forth and then interrupt themselves to talk about what’s happening on the field. What was interesting was that the opening sequence was different when I played with the Phillies than when I played with the Rays. When I played as the Phillies, Thorne mentioned Cole Hamels’ World Series MVP award. When I played with the Rays, they showed Scott Kazmir warming up in the bullpen, and Thorne talked about how he’d match up against the power lefties in the Phillies lineup. Very cool.

One of my biggest complaints about the 2K series has been that either the parks are too small for the fielders, or the fielders are oversized giants who are able to cover far too much territory, particularly in the outfield. This is not the case in 2K9. Either the field is bigger or the player models are smaller, because the dimensions seem far more appropriate and realistic.

The animations are good, but not perfect. There are times (especially noticeable when your team throws it around the infield) when it looks like your player is pointed a different direction than the one in which he throws the ball. There are also a few times when it looked like an animation skipped a beat (most noticeably when your batter goes from his walk-up animation into his stance). But for the most part players moved pretty naturally and looked pretty good.

Another noticeable quirk is the fact that the umps and the base coaches apparently don’t keep very good track of how many outs are in an inning. After both games, the team on the field headed back to the dugout while the umps and base coaches stood around in their places. Not a huge deal, but noticeable.

There were also foul balls that rolled on a plane into the dugout as if there was no “dug” part or any fence in front of them. Details like this aren’t game breaking, and might be ironed out for the final version, but it was something else I noticed.

The organ from 2K6, 2K7, and 2K8 is back. How much IS that doggie in the window? You’d think we’d know after three years.

I don’t know what the hell is with the clouds of dust that 2K added, but it looks like these guys are playing a bowl of flour. Every step onto the dirt, every ball bouncing in the dirt, everything that happens in the dirt causes a ludicrous cloud of dust to pop up. It doesn’t affect the gameplay, but it’s a tad obnoxious.

The first “game” I played looked like it was during the late afternoon at Citizens Bank Park. As I progressed through the three innings, the lighting in the stadium definitely shifted. I think there were shadows moving across the field, but I couldn’t tell because there was no option to show replays. The second “game” I played, with the Rays, was in the dark of night. Citizens Bank Park looked just as good in the dark. I’d like to know if they just randomly generate start times for the demo and, if so, what the start times were for my first two games.

I understand why 2K didn’t want to put multiple camera options into the demo, but I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t mess with the behind-the-pitcher camera or the batting camera. To me, the default BTP camera felt pretty similar to the camera in 2K8, yet videos have shown that it can be adjusted to give the game more of a broadcast feel. The batting camera didn’t feel right to me. I still had a very hard time differentiating between balls and strikes, so I will likely be messing with the camera options next Tuesday.

The fielding camera might be the most disappointing thing I noticed. Either I’m absolutely terrible at fielding, or the camera is pretty bad. I had two plays with Carl Crawford when I swear to God I was standing right underneath the ball, and it landed either right next to him or right behind him. I’m sure with practice, I’ll get used to the camera, but it seems like outfield play is going to be less forgiving than it was in previous years.

One neat little feature I noticed when Pat Burrell came up to bat for the Rays was that the crowd booed him. In reality, I would think even the Philly crowd would cheer Burrell after the solid seasons he put together for the Phillies, but it was still a neat little touch. Thorne even said something along the lines of, “This home crowd doesn’t forget easily.” Nice touch.

There are other neat little touches in the presentation. 2K’s big addition was a real-world presentation, where everything in the park is happening in real time, so there are no cutscenes. Meaning after a hitter makes an out, the batboy will run to pick up the bat while the on-deck hitter moves to the batter’s box and the guy who made the out will head back to the dugout. It all looks very cool, and is very immersive. Also, fans dive and fight for foul balls and home runs, which they didn’t do in 2K8. Very cool. The crowd also looks much, much, MUCH more realistic than it did in 2K8. It’s so natural-looking that you barely notice the crowd in 2K9, which is a very good thing.

I know framerate has been a concern for this series, especially after 2K8. I’m not a technical know-it-all, but as far as I could tell, the framerate didn’t suffer any drops at all.

GAMEPLAY
Obviously, the presentation and the control scheme are frills if the gameplay sucks. To give you some idea of where I’m coming from, I actually didn’t hate MLB 2K8. A lot of people did, but I thought fielding was fun, and pitching was fun. I was just very unhappy with the hitting. It lacked any semblance of fun, and the results were unrealistic. I felt like I had as good a chance of pulling a low, outside slider over the fence as I did pulling a high inside fastball.

I’m happy to say 2K9 “feels” 200% better in the hitting department. I was too confused at first to really try the influence hitting, but when I swung early and tried to pull an outside pitch, I rolled over it and grounded out weakly. When I swung early at an inside pitch, I made good contact. When I figured out the influence hitting and (out of curiosity) tried to pull everything, the results were as you’d expect. A lot of weak grounders pulled to the infielders. In fact, I only got one hit in six innings (against Scott Kazmir), a line-drive single by Chase Utley into right. I’m sure hitting will get easier with time, but from my six innings with the game, this is the first time in the 2K series that hitting felt “right.” I’m hoping it’s even better when using the cursor-based system.

I thought pitching was going to be a breeze when 2K took away the third step of the “gesture” system. I was right in the first game while pitching with Cole Hamels. I struck out two, and allowed one hit and no runs in three innings.

Then, the second game happened.

I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but Scott Kazmir got absolutely torched in the first inning of the second game. He served up three home runs to the Philly lineup, including back-to-back homers to Utley and Ryan Howard. And one of the Crawford misplays turned into a Hamels “triple” (I’ll get to that later). I didn’t help by trying to figure out what the buttons did, leading to an intentional walk and a bizarre pitchout. In all, Kazmir gave up 10 runs on 9 hits in the first before settling down.

A.I.
One of the crucial things in any sports video game is how the CPU plays the game. I’m not much of an online gamer, particularly not for sports games, so I play a lot of games against the CPU. Here is what I noticed in regards to CPU tendencies.

One of the biggest concerns people were voicing about the early videos which have been released about the game was that the CPU batters swing at nearly everything. It’s definitely a concern. I did get 3-4 called strikes during my 6 innings, but there should have been far more. Apparently, there are sliders that will help adjust this, but as of right now, it’s a legitimate concern, and will likely lead to very low human pitch counts.

Another big concern from 2K8 was the fact that the CPU almost never attempted to steal. While I didn’t have enough baserunners on during my six innings, I watched a few batters of a CPU vs. CPU demo, and Crawford stole both second and third during the first inning. That’s good news.

One thing I noticed that was either a welcome change or was completely odd was that my catcher was calling a lot of fastballs. Frankly, I don’t think the catchers in 2K8 called for enough fastballs, so it was an interesting change of pace. It honestly felt a lot more like my catcher was trying to set up the CPU batters this year, as he didn’t call for sliders, curve balls, and changeups anywhere near as often as catchers did in 2K8.

The one glaringly bad example of CPU A.I. came when Crawford misplayed a Hamels fly ball, and it bounced away from him. Crawford recovered in time to hold Hamels to a double, but as I threw to second, Hamels rounded it and went to third. He was seriously only about fifteen “feet” off second base when Akinori Iwamura got the ball, and he was chugging for third. I was so confused, I botched the throw to third, so Hamels was able to slide in safely. My two concerns were that they scored it a triple (when it was probably a two-base error and a one-base error), and that Hamels didn’t stop at second base. Weird.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I definitely want to get more time in with this demo before next Tuesday. I’d like to pretend I won’t buy the game even if I’m not that impressed by Tuesday, but I know I will, especially since it’s the only baseball option for 360 owners.

The presentation is infinitely better than it was in 2K8, but I guess the bottom line is that if you didn’t like the controls for 2K8, you probably won’t like these controls, because they haven’t changed much. I am just as sold on pitching and fielding as I was with 2K8. If anything, fielding seems slightly harder, which is very good. I want to get some more time in with the hitting to see if the results remain as realistic as they were in my first six innings. If the results hold up, this will be the best baseball game available on the 360, and will definitely get us through the summer.