Major League Baseball 2K10

MLB 2K10 is the most recent offering from 2K sports, makers of such games as NBA 2K10 and All Pro Football 2K8. To start off, it's a game about the sport "baseball", in which players... Well, if you don't know about baseball, I would recommend googling it or otherwise informing yourself. The game itself, then: 
 

Things this game does well

 
  I will first mention that while I am a big fan of real life baseball, I have little experience with baseball games. The only ones I can say I have played any considerable amount of are MVP Baseball 2005 and Backyard Baseball (the original), both of which I played the hell out of and enjoyed very much, and both on PC. So I am coming into this game after not playing a new baseball game for roughly 4-5 years.  
 
MLB 2K10 is the most technically impressive sports game I have ever played (in my opinion), and it looks absolutely amazing. The character models and animations look incredible (not lifelike quite yet, but getting closer all the time). Stadiums look so realistic, and you can see tons of work was put into modeling these things perfectly, and it pays off for the player. 
           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Another technical wonder is the stats and specs of each player. I've seen it in sports games before, but it's done really well here. Everything is kept in record, and it's great for fans like me. 
 
The commentary has also improved over other games i've seen. The conversation is almost always topical, and there's enough of it to keep you hearing new things often enough. The complaint I have with it is a more specific one, and it deals with the franchise mode.  I was playing said mode with a team I had custom drafted, and the commentators would not stop going on about the last year's team stats. As any intelligent being would know, these stats were irrelevant seeing as the team was literally about 100% different. Regardless, the commentating is mainly quite satisfactory. 
 
The game modes are mainly pretty vanilla, but Franchise mode is really excellent. You can keep up with other team's news on a homepage designed to look like the real MLB.com, and it's an intriguing idea, what with the news stories/headlines/etc. This feature seems well implemented for people who go looking for it. 
 
Another fun game mode is the "My Player" mode, which let's you play one player from the minors all the way up to the majors. It's all based on earning skill points from playing which then allow you to upgrade your player. The cool thing is that the game doesn't just throw you into the Majors right away, and a large portion of the mode is just working your way up to being called up. I like that, but at the same time, it makes you start with an absolutely un-talented player and upgrade them. This is what I would want in theory, but in reality makes you play many games with a terrible player, which can be frustrating at best. Then again, that's really the whole point of the mode, but it does slow progress.  
  
Also, the music is pretty good. A few nice rock songs complemented by a god-awful rap song (2, I think) makes this a mixed bag that's upbeat and somewhat fun to listen to.

Things this game does NOT do well

 
  
My main complaint would be the controls. MLB 2K10 is also out on the Xbox 360, and it was obviously developed with that platform mainly in mind. The controls are all skate-style for pitching (using the right thumbstick to flick in the correct path), and while this is a new take and seems fine when it works, it often didn't read my movements correctly.   
 
Actually, before I talk about the inaccuracies of the controls, I should probably mention that if you don't have a PC compatible controller, you would be better off sitting in a closet giving yourself a home abortion with a rusty screwdriver. No, seriously. The tutorials in game are formatted for controllers even if you are using a keyboard/mouse, and even if you do figure out the controls, they're god awful. Basically, the arrow keys take the place of the right thumbstick, and it's very hard to master. While a keyboard does make locating pitches much easier than using a controller, I still wouldn't recommend it, just because the pitches are so damn hard to pull off correctly.  
 
Back to the controller rant, I admit that it was probably caused by me having a terrible controller. What can I say, I've never been much of a PC gamer, and the controller I use was even originally purchased for an Xbox 360 anyway. But hey, if it works it works.  
 
Also, MLB 2k10 can be a wee bit glitchy. It's not a huge deal, and it's usually just weird graphical things, but it does bear mentioning that the game is most definitely not perfect graphically. Still, it's really not too much of an issue. 
 

Final Verdict

 
 All in all, this is a game I enjoyed. I say, if you have a 360, you should probably get it on that instead and save yourself the trouble. So I do recommend this to baseball fans, but if you aren't a huge baseball guy/girl, this probably won't be the game that gets you obsessed.