Major League Baseball 2K11 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I was looking to buy a portable baseball game that I can take on the go with me. Since there is a dearth of baseball games on the Nintendo DS, I picked up a copy of this game. MLB 2k11 for the DS is a fun, but not great game that is enjoyable with a few annoyances.
The graphics on this game are not anything I would call spectacular. The players, while they look human, are more like sprites with jagged edges. The animations are canned and look the most part unnatural. Every game is played during the daytime, although you only can view the field while at bat as fielders are only represented by circles. There is also no umpire behind the plate. The stadiums themselves (what you can see) are the only part of the graphics that are above average as most look like there real world counterparts and feature some nice details. Finally, even with the streamlined graphics, the framerate does stutter in some spots, most notably when you strike a batter out.
The Sound is barely noticeable and forgettable. Gary Thorne is the only announcer carried over from the consoles and while his play-by-play is mostly accurate, it gets repetitive quickly. The other sounds are limited to some in-game music every now and then, the umpires calls and the sound of the ball hitting the bat. The menu music is the generic baseball theme carried over from the consoles.
Control-wise the game is mostly responsive. Pitching is simple enough. Just press and hold the button, wait for the circle to expand to full for power and then release and then press the button again when the circle is small. Batting is also simple enough. Press B for contact swing, A for power, and Y to bunt. Stealing and advancing are controlled by the L & R trigger buttons, although stealing is almost impossible as the runners are usually thrown out. Also controlling the runners on the basepaths can be hit or miss as the runners sometimes do not go when you want them to or go to late. When you let the AI run for they will make some bonehead moves, for example trying to advance to a base they have no chance of making. As for the fielding controls, you can let the AI do it for you, or do it yourself. I recommend you do it yourself as the AI will make far too many mistakes, especially on fly balls to shallow outfield (the infielders will sometimes not go for it, leaving the outfielder no chance). Manually controlling the nearest fielder by pressing and L and your throw it the base you want by pressing the corresponding face button. The camera views for the pitching and batting interfaces are static and are unable to be changed.
As for the modes, you are limited to single play, playoffs and season. You can not edit the rosters except as to changing the lineup and what pitcher you will use, and there are no fielding drills or home-run derby. The other feature are in the in-game minigames that occur on close plays which consists of a press the corresponding buttons or get the cursor into the middle. Also the game sometimes freezes in extra inning games or walk-off situations.
Personally, even with the flaws, I liked this game. For the most part it is usually a fun game. I cannot recommend this game if you are the type of player that wants long term playability as there isn't much here. If you have last years, I wouldn't make the upgrade as this game appears to be the same with only a roster update that is current through the last years playoff games. (so no cliff lee on the phils, etc.).

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