Rating:


Price: $59.99
Reviewed On: PS3

The Skinny: San Francisco Giants pitcher and 2009 National League Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum heads this year's offering from 2K Sports, which features new pitching controls, improved opponent A.I., and, generally, a very forgiving experience for newbies.

The Good: What made last year's offering excruciating was the impractical pitching delivery system which made you perform multiple-part gestures with your analog stick just to throw a specific pitch. 2K9 has made some concessions by simplifying the process down to two motions: Move the right analog stick in one direction to start the pitcher's motion and a second direction, corresponding to the available pitches on-screen, to deliver the ball to the plate. It takes some practice to time the ideal point of release for each hurler, but at least you won't be doing the equivalent of video game trigonometry with your thumbs. As far as presentation is concerned, we were more than pleasantly surprised to see the foot-in-mouthed sportscaster Joe Morgan sent to the bench in favor of Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips. Other than that, expect pretty much the same TV broadcast-style interface from last year's game.



The Bad: While there was some jiggering with the game mechanics and there is an overall better feel to the game, the difficulty levels are all over the place. Hitting is ridiculously easy and, as a result, home runs seem to come at a faster clip than normal. (We hit seven—SEVEN—home runs in our first game.) This, in turn, makes the pitching game devolve into a contest of who can swing at the most bad pitches, instead of what baseball really is, which is keeping hitters off-balanced and location pitching.

Maxim Tip: The series' collection feature has been revamped a bit, enabling you to earn virtual trading cards for your online-playable "card team" by either playing well with an individual player or keeping a player off the bases when facing him.

Buy, Rent, or Disembowel: Rent. The competition offers a more well-rounded experience, but baseball fans who don't want to get too technical with their games might want to take a look at this.