Monday, March 2, 2009

The Show VS. MLB 2K9: Franchise Battle -- FIGHT!

I have been contracted to do a feature for Crispy Gamer discussing the franchise mode's "accuracy" in both 2K9 and The Show. After 6 seasons of sims now I think I have a fairly good grasp on what The Show does well and what it doesn't do well. I still want to get to 2020 to see how the league looks, though. And I'll most likely start my career in 2020 so I can have a good mix of real and fake players. Hey it's my game; I'll play it however I like.

The short version: retiring, player aging, some roster management oddness, and slightly lower than expected team ERAs are the "bad" things. Everything else looks pretty good. By roster management oddness I mean I see some teams carrying 12 position players and 13 pitchers. Another "in no way is this a huge deal but I'd like to see it a little better" observation. At least everyone has a backup catcher and one backup OF.

But on the whole, The Show's franchise mode is very good. Not *great*, but very good. The player progression, particularly a player's loss of ability due to age, needs to be better for it to get anything higher than a "good" in my view and if I want to play a franchise game I think I'll just stick with OOTP, but for a console game, it's about as good as it gets. There. Now you don't even need to read the feature.

Freelance Check Please!

As soon as I get my copy of 2K9 I'll start messing with it and will likely do so after the "day 1" patch is out.

No way do I take Todd's word for it. That dude is NUTS.