The Blog for the Sports Gamer Three guys who love Sports Gaming rant and rave about various stuff.

Baseball ’08 – First Impressions

MLB2K8:

- In one quick game of MLB2K8, I saw a few ugly animations. J.J. Hardy had his back to home plate and was still able to field a grounder at shortstop. Then when he made the play, he contorted his body to throw around himself and still throw out the runner at 1st. It was just a very awkward looking play from the start. Even my wife commented about how ugly it looked.

- The new pitching motions in MLB2K8 are interesting, I'm still just not sure how I'm supposed to feel that pressing down on a stick, then back up is like a fastball. I don't think the new pitching motions hurt the game though, so there is that.

- After Ryan Braun hit a homer for the Brewers, Bernie went down the slide... well, I should say that he went through the slide. Half of his body disappeared, re-appeared, then disappeared again. It was a horrible cut scene. It was one of those things that would annoy the hell out of me if I had to see it more than once because it was so badly done.

- I'm going to have to play another game in order to get an accurate sample, but I don't know if I've seen the CPU throw more than one pitch out of the strike zone to this point. Maybe I'm swinging too much, but it seems like they're not trying to get you to go after any pitches.

MLB 08: The Show

- Dan and I were never able to connect for an online game. We tried to connect to each other 7 or 8 times, but it would always fail. I don't know what the deal is, but it seems as though their servers are overwhelmed.

- Road to the Show mode is still a lot of fun. I'm hitting .160 in spring training and failing my manager at least once or twice a game, but I'm still enjoying the mode.

- Some long load times with The Show... oh and the game does have a 1-2 minute delay when it's first launched while it installs onto your Hard Drive.... At least it's not as long as DMC4.

- The music for MLB 08 is light years better than MLB2K8. That might be a personal preference, but I just found the soundtrack much more appealing.

More info after I can get a few more games of each in.