Major League Baseball: MLB 2K10

"MLB 2K10 is heading in the right direction...  Game Informer
"...fan-friendly approach and a lot of charm.  Richard Grisham, GamesRadar.com
"It's easily the best looking baseball title 2K Sports has ever put out...  Andrew Reeves, GamersTemple.com

IGN.com 7 of 10
The adage of the once-great star being overshadowed by a young up-and-comer is ever-present in sports. You'll find no better real world example of this phenomenon than what's happening with the current state of baseball games. The old and wise MLB 2K series has been totally usurped by Sony's MLB: The Show, which only recently broke onto the scene. Every year we wait and see if 2K is going to be able to keep pace with what Sony brings to the table, and every year we walk away disappointed. While MLB 2K10 takes small steps towards fixing the problems that made last year's game such a disappointment, it still doesn't come close to delivering the definitive baseball experience that we all want from the oldest baseball franchise around...If you've been watching any of our coverage leading up to the launch of MLB 2K10, it should be clear that 2K Sports is putting a large focus on the hitter vs. pitcher duel that is inherent to the game of baseball. The authenticity that 2K Sports has been able to capture when you step to the plate or hurl the ball across it is probably the single best achievement in MLB 2K10. It's something that other games have gotten right in the past, but 2K10 finally seems to have mastered the AI that drives these conflicts. If you swing at everything thrown your way, you'll absolutely never get a hittable pitch. It's up to you to display discipline and patience in waiting for a pitch to hit, much like players do in reality. It seemed like neither the hitter nor the pitcher had an advantage with the newly refined mechanic, something that was a worry when I first played MLB 2K10...Franchise mode, despite the addition of My Player, will still be where you spend most of your time. MLB Today does a good job of keeping you up to speed with what's going on in the league, and the commentators have a good repertoire of quips to spew out that reflect past performances and trends developing throughout the season. Trade abilities are standard, though the inability to spice things up with three-team trades, draft picks or cold hard cash is a disappointment. I also ran into what appeared to be a bug in the trading artificial intelligence. It seemed as though teams totally disregarded how much money they had at the time of the trade. I made a deal that included sending Derek Jeter and A-Rod to the Cardinals, thus leaving the team from St. Louis more than $20 million in debt. They didn't really seem to care...MLB 2K10, despite its many flaws, is still a much better core game of baseball than the series presented last year. It's just too bad that My Player mode didn't work out as well as I had hoped after first playing it. There are some very questionable design decisions that will hopefully be ironed by next season because the idea behind the mode itself is sound. You can also see that the foundation for great baseball is nearly there with things like the pitcher vs. batter gameplay going so smooth - Nate Ahearn

GamingAge.com 8 of 10
It's year two of Visual Concepts' stewardship of 2K Sports' baseball title. Last year's game had too many animation issues in the field and a pitcher-batter interface with a host of issues. Before the release of 2K10, promises were made, as they always are. On occasion, even the most jaded of us is pleasantly surprised...During a pre-release developer conference call, much was said about focusing on the the pitcher-batter interface. It doesn't take much time with 2K10 to realize that it's paid off. The system finally feels right for pitching. It's been overly complicated in the past, with analog stick motions to choose pitches and timing circles to simulate accuracy. It was a good system, but there were simply too many layers. The current system finds the sweet spot between too complicated and just pressing a button to throw a pitch. With a little practice, you'll find a good blend of risk and reward...There are other, bigger, issues, however. The biggest is online multiplayer. So far, we've had far too many freezes and lost games to recommend it. And achievements are unavailable if any sliders are used, which is, frankly, absurd. Sports games and sliders are forever linked, and turning off a popular feature like achievements for anyone who uses them is a poor decision...Finally, stealing is simply too much work to be worth the effort. Not every piece of the game should be as simple as tapping one button, but not every piece of the game should be a game in itself, either...It took a while, but MLB 2K10 has fixed enough, and added enough, to be an excellent way to play a baseball game on your TV. The multiplayer issues need to be fixed as soon as possible, but we're looking forward to the series using this year as a foundation for the future. - Kent Bardo