PlayStation 2
Released in 2005 by 2K Sports
Grade: D+
This game makes a strong first impression that’s full of flair, but it has gameplay bugs that will drive you mad.
Where it falls in the series
The series started with World Series Baseball in 1994 on Sega Genesis, and there are some confusing naming conventions along the way. There’s World Series Baseball 2K3, followed by ESPN Baseball, followed by this, and they even made a “World Series Edition” of this, released during the 2005 postseason. The series made it to MLB 2K13 before calling it quits and leaving The Show as the only MLB video game franchise, despite the fact that it’s only on PlayStation consoles.
Praises and gripes
At first this feels like a promising baseball sim: great-looking ballparks, lifelike pitching animations, and a sweet crack of the bat. There’s so much ESPN-infused pizazz that I had to dial it back in the options to get a swift ballgame that didn’t overload my senses.
There’s an inventive pitching system using two crosshairs and little moving circles, where your bad timing is punished with inaccurate throws. If that’s too much, choose from four simpler pitch systems, and while you’re at it, you can dumb down hitting a few different ways too.
Some pitches have unrealistic movement, like a curveball swooping too far from side to side, which is fine in video game context but will bother baseball purists.
The action in the field also misses the mark, as fielders don’t move with grace, and sometimes the extra moment to stitch together animations costs you outs, which is frustrating.
But here’s where it really comes unglued. The ball gets past the catcher all the time. Several times a game. Not just on wild pitches. It could be any pitch. Nothing looks odder to a baseball fan than a pitch an inch off the plate that zooms to the backstop, as if there were no catcher. It’s a horrendous, inexcusable bug.
It even happens on the bases occasionally, with fielders suddenly forgetting how to catch and letting the ball fly through their legs. Instead of tagging a guy out at third, you’re watching him run all the way home.
This game has about a hundred thousand ways to customize the gameplay, yet nothing can fix these mistakes, making it basically unplayable. Sigh.