Tag Archives: baseball

My Take on MLB 2K10

It rules.

MLB 2K10 is a vast improve­ment over the last ver­sion of the game I pur­chased two years ago. The rea­sons are sim­ple. It’s tak­en the same approach that Mad­den took in sharp­en­ing his name­sake video game: made it hard­er and more realistic.  The approach at the plate no longer requires the hack and slash tac­tics in ’08; you can actu­al­ly look at pitch­es and maybe even draw a walk. I’ve drawn exact­ly one walk to date, with Ben Fran­cis­co as DH no less! The dis­ci­pline required to have good at-bats is a dra­mat­ic change from ‘08’s com­i­cal home run der­by, where hav­ing con­sec­u­tive mul­ti­ple home run games with Pedro Feliz or Geoff Jenk­ins was­n’t out of the question.

The pitch­ing con­trols? Meh. I don’t see the big diff. This is part of the prob­lem with mar­ket­ing sports games today. At this point, every­one knows that the real dif­fer­ences from year to year are few. How do you gen­er­ate excite­ment about a game whose main improve­ment is that the ros­ters are updat­ed? Even the ven­er­a­ble Mad­den fran­chise has suf­fered a decline in sales!

Oth­er points:

  • I love the MLB Today fea­ture, but wish it would replace the fran­chise mode alto­geth­er. Why not merge the two experiences?
  • I hate unlock­ing things. Why not emu­late those clas­sic Mad­den games and just include the clas­sic teams (or sim­u­lacra there­of) and sta­di­ums in the game? If you’re a fan of sports games, these sorts of loy­al­ty gim­micks don’t real­ly work out. I want to play as the Phillies (or hell, the A’s) in all of the parks they ever played in, in my choice of uni­forms. Can I get an amen from the guys at Uni Watch?
  • The art of steal­ing bases became more dif­fi­cult in the new game. It’s a lot to try to man­age an at-bat while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pulling the trig­ger (lit­er­al­ly) to steal sec­ond. It’d be dif­fer­ent if you were play­ing as the first or third base coach, but you’re not.

Apart from those details, I love every minute of the game. Last night I pulled off a thrilling 10 inning come­back win over the low­ly Pirates. The game end­ed on a walkoff homer by Ryan Howard, the team gath­er­ing around home as he plat­ed the win­ning run. It was amaz­ing. MLB 2K10 is a huge improve­ment over pre­vi­ous efforts and I look for­ward to play­ing the 2010 cam­paign with the Fight­in’ Phils.

The World Series Trophy


The World Series Trophy
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

I final­ly down­loaded my pic­tures from my moment with the 2008 Phillies World Cham­pi­onship tro­phy on the 44th Fl. of the Com­cast Cen­ter. It’s hard to artic­u­late how thrilled I was to be in its pres­ence. It’s not some­thing I’ll soon forget.

Helen and I are going to three games the first week of April. I can’t wait to see all of our friends in Sec. 143 in Cit­i­zens Bank Park for anoth­er awe­some sea­son of Phillies base­ball. It’s going to be strange not yack­ing at Pat this year, but I’m sure we’ll have plen­ty to say to Raul Ibanez over the course of the season.

Let’s Go, Phillies!

Phillies on Cira Cen­ter., orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by Black­mail Is My Life.

Helen and I were afraid that tonight’s game might get rained out, which would’ve meant that she would miss Game 4 because she’s leav­ing for San Diego on busi­ness Monday.

When it was clear that they were going to play tonight no mat­ter what, crafty lefty Jamie Moy­er became the focus of our anx­i­ety. Would he turn in a per­for­mance like he has in his last two post­sea­son starts?

Nope.

Moy­er’s pitched a gem into the sev­enth. Ruiz, Utley, and Howard have home­red and the Phils lead 4–3 at the moment. Let’s hope they can hold on for the win!