I submitted my review today and gave MLB 2K8 a very mediocre score. Can anything actually be "really mediocre?" Hmm.Anyway, it boils down to this for me: the tech issues REALLY hurt this game. I'm sorry, but paying $60 for a game is a lot of green and it better damn well work the way it should. This game doesn't and should be criticized accordingly.
Um, Todd, don't let me influence YOUR review any. Ahem. I try not to get TOO detailed in my mainstream reviews. You gotta know your audience, so I leave the minutia for you people. Yeah for you people!
There are things about the game that I love, that bug me, and that I just don't understand.
The Franchise interface is one that I just don't understand. In a baseball game, really more than any other sport, you NEED a quick and dirty GUI because you'll be roster shuffling a lot, especially with all of the minor league stuff. Calling guys up, sending them down, yadda, yadda. 2K8 makes this REALLY annoying because you can't cut players and call them up from the same screen. Are you kidding me?
This is what I am talking about with the whole Consolification of Sports Games. In Heat Heat back in the day, I could move players from AAA to the Bigs with my mouse..in 2 seconds. Click, drag, done. Here, I have to navigate through various screens to do a very simple (and often used) managerial task. 100% inefficient. (is that possible, too?)
Also, did you know that you can't look at a player's past history? In most baseball games you can survey a player's entire career -- see his rookie season stats all the way to his 15th year as an old man. Not here. You can see the current year and the previous year and the "total" but you can't even see the teams the guy played for. I dunno if The Show does this, but it should. EVERY baseball game with a franchise mode should.
So, while I didn't see any huge bugs and gaffes in the franchise mode (questionable AI is just part of the deal these days) it's a pain in the ASS to actually PLAY, which is sorta the whole point.
Why isn't there player arbitration? Where is the Rule 5 draft? Why is franchise limited to 4 players? Ah, I know. We needed trading cards.
Oh, and yeah, we're getting like a foot of snow today. Bonus.
