The Blog for the Sports Gamer

I just rented it because I miss the days of playing as Kurt Angle and Booker T. After playing that game, I can see why Midway filed for Bankruptcy. What a turd.

According to Kotaku – it is…

Although we are just getting ready for the baseball games, Football is taking the front page here in New England as they are basically cleaning house – first, utility guy of awesomeness Mike Vrabel gets traded. Then Matt Cassel gets traded. What the hell?

Is anyone really going to pay $5.99 for the video Killzone 2 strategy guide on the PS Store?

MLB 2K9 demo is now at the PlayStation Store. General early buzz on this game is not great unfortunately with former BSG blogger Todd Brakke calling the franchise mode completely borked but a patch will be out soon. Not a great sign – here’s our broken game that we shipped which we know we will fix. Seriously do we really need a baseball game in early March – 5 weeks before the season?

Punch Out comes out May 18 for Wii – very cool. These Wii Play Control games are just like Virtual Console games . April 20 is the release date for Excitebots, which should be good.

Warhawk for PS3 is now $19.99…very cool.

So what are your thoughts on the MLB 2K9 demo for PS3 and 360? Obviously, Glen sucks at baseball games because yet again, I am able to crunch balls out of the park – it’s no glitch if you ask me…

During last week’s Woot-Off, I picked up the original Slacker G1 for $59…of course, after I bought it, they had 3 other Slackers available for purchase including the Slacker G2, making me a doofus..but oh well.

I got it yesterday and wow, even the old version is a great thing…it’s like downloading a portable radio station for free – you don’t have to pick any songs, just say I want (artist) radio and poof, over wifi it downloads a selection of songs to your player. And again, it’s free!

For $3/month you can skip songs as much as you want and save them to your player. You can also play your own Mp3s although the size is limited to 1GB or in my case 500mb (yuk).

What’s the catch? Well, the togo player doesn’t have every artist available – you can have U2 radio, but you can’t have U2 archived on your player – you have to use the web player for that.

Anyway, I still really like it—it’s great for a workout…no playlist required!

- If you have a scoreboard in centerfield showing a player and their stats… update the stats.  All I saw for the Brewers players during the first game was .000 for every single player.  That’s just a silly thing.  You’re obviously keeping track of the in-game stats, just put them on the board.

- I had 6 errors in a 12-inning game.  5 of them were simple throws to first where Fielder never had his foot on the bag… that’s just wrong.

- The CPU was aggressive at the plate, but I think that can be adjusted… They would take pitches on the corners…but almost never swing at anything off the plate.

- I have no idea how Dan was crushing the ball like he was.  I had a ton of singles in my game… a few doubles… but nothing hit anywhere near the outfield wall.

Barry Bonds records are no where to be found in the game.  Now that’s just weird.  They have the historical stat sheet and McGwire is the single season Home Run champ and Hank Aaron is the all-time Home Run champ.  Ruth is the single season Slugging Percentage champ as well.

Very odd….

I think I have a question to ask of the 2K team.

First off… There is a trailer for The Bigs 2 on the disk.  Classic players are on the game.  I saw Ozzie Smith, Reggie Jackson, and I think Dave Winfield when he was wearing the Poop-Brown Padres uni’s.  After picking up this game again recently… I’m very happy to see this game being announced.

Ok.  I’m looking at the controls setup and for batting they have potions to turn on the Batter’s Eye feature and Zone Hitting.  By default they are off.  (This is for the Total Control swing method.)

Classic Mode offers the same settings, but removes the swing stick features.

They have an option to press the Select Button (remember PS3 version) to change sides of the plate for switch hitters.

For Pitching, the options are to turn off Release Timing and to switch between Breakpoint Aim and Pinpoint Aim.  (This is for Total Control… for Classic the Release Timing option isn’t there.)

Ok, here’s the slider settings….  (This is for the Pro setting.)

For Batting…

Batting Success

Batting Contact

Batting Power

Pitcher Handedness Influence

Inside Edge Batting Zone Influence

Batting Pitch Influence

Batter’s Eye Influence

Hit Direction Influence

Zone Hitting Influence

Bunt Contact

Bunt Success

Pitching…..

Pitch Meter Speed

Pitch Speed

Gesture Recognition

Hold Timing Influence

Release Timing Influence

Pitch Rating Influence

Pitch Break Influence

Pitcher Composure Influence

Fielding…

Fielding Errors

Throw Meter Influence

Fielder Speed

Running…

Base Runner Speed

Pickoff Success

Catcher Throw-Out Success

Next up… some Gameplay stuff…

If you’re a fan of the Baseball Mogul series, they’re giving away last years game for free right now.

There are 1,000 copies available, so they might be gone at any time.

Here’s the link to get your free copy.

Baseball Mogul 2010 comes out on March 25th, so if you’re looking to try that one out… here’s a way to get yourself ready for it.

Both of the kids have Strep… and the video card won’t fit into the system.

Just my kind of week, I guess.

My copy of MLB2K9 for the PS3 just arrived…

Of course, we’re taking the kids to the doctor… so I’ll post more about it later tonight.

- I played another game on MLB2K9 last night and lost 3-2.  I scored 2 runs in the first, the Rays came back to score 3 in the top of the 2nd.  I was impressed that the CPU started using the pen to get situational matchups against my batters.  They played the 3 inning game like it was the 7th, 8th, and 9th.  Percival even came into close in the 3rd.  I was very impressed by that.

- Yesterday my wife went to the doctor and found out that she had Strep throat for the 3rd time in the last 3 months.  As a result of that, they had a standing order that the entire family get tested… and as it turns out… I have it for the 2nd time in 3 months.  Super.

- I am getting almost all the parts for my new PC today… so I should be getting some time in on that.  I just hope that the power supply works out ok for the system.  That was the one thing I was really having a hard time with when ordering it.  My system can’t support SLI, so it was a pain to pick out a power supply that had enough power, but wasn’t going to be crazy expensive either.  (I was trying to keep the whole system in the $600 range.)

We’ll see how it all works out later today, I guess.

After reading the posts over at Operation Sports and then hearing Dan’s thoughts, I wasn’t sure what I would think about the demo, but I was pretty impressed.

My game ended 1-0, when Philly scored the winning run when I made a bad throw into center when trying to throw out the person stealing 2nd.

Here are the things that stood out to me.

- The commentary is terrific.  The combination of Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips seem like they have been doing this forever.

- 2K seems to have really put forth a great effort into making it look like you’re really watching a game.  I’m watching the demo mode right now and it really has a great flow to it.  I’ve seen the batboy come out to grab a bat after a walk.  People in the crowd dive to try and catch a foul ball.

- Personally, I don’t think the ads are as bad as people say.  There is a banner behind home plate, but there is one of those in every stadium now, right?  It changes advertisements enough to make it look realistic as well.

- The demo really needed something to teach you the controls.  It’s been way too long since I played 2K8, so I don’t remember all of the little details.  I was trying to see how to pick off a guy on second, and ended up throwing an intentional walk.  A little annoyance, to be sure, but an annoyance all the same.

- As for the gameplay, I didn’t have any luck like Dan did with crushing all kinds of homers… I was able to scratch out one hit in 3 innings, but I guess that just means that I suck.  In the pitching realm, I like the pitching system quite a bit.  It feels rather natural to use the ‘pitch stick’ to pull off your pitches.

I’ll give a game a bit more time tonight, but I was rather happy with my time with the demo.

I just downloaded & played my first game of MLB 2K9. My thoughts:

1. Gary Thorne? Again? Hey, I like him, he does Orioles telecasts, but didn’t he also do play by play for NHL 2K9 and Little League World Series Baseball for the Wii? Wow, he’s the go to play by play guy.
2. Wow, if you like Pepsi, you will love MLB2K9
3. I played as PHI in a 3 inning game vs TB (only choice you have). The pitching dynamic seems better refined than last year, I like how they have stamina and composure as meters. Fielding is nicely done, although not much different than last year.
4. Batting was insanely easy. Here’s my 1st inning: fly out, HR, HR, single, single, ground into DP. Here’s my 2nd inning: double, IBB (?! – supposedly to get to the pitcher), single, HR, fly out, fly out, ground out. Pretty funny that my pitcher got on after the IBB…although it seems to be an odd strategy to do that in the 2nd inning.
5. I saw glitches – even though I was pitching, the on screen graphic would show me as batting ?!
6. One thing I do love is the over the shoulder view when pitching to look back the runner – at the same time you’ll also be able to see the speed rating of the runner. Now that is cool – you don’t necessarily have to attempt a pick off, you can just look him down.

I’m guessing the game will be offense oriented. The 2K menu still sucks and they really need to make it look better. Graphics look great. Sounds aren’t bad – however in between innings seems to take a while. Also, there’s music playing when batting – what is this, a Japanese game?

So, while I won’t say I completely hate it, and it’s actually better than I expected, I’m just not juiced for it. I’ll rent it for sure.

Major Nelson says the MLB2K9 demo is up, however, when I go to download it I get a “This feature is temporarily unavailable” message. The game box is also generic. Looks like something is borked…