Hitting is less so, but has good enough feedback checking your swing is still almost impossible to do, and it feels like a gameplay balance decision rather than an oversight, which makes it feel cheap. The analog pitching control is still unmatched and a pleasure to do.
Pitching remains the best part of the game. As a result, human walks can happen more. While a pitch over the plate will be a strike, trying to nick the corners won't always result in a strike call, even if the pitch indicator shows it was on the line in the zone. Part of this is due to the fact that the umpires now have a more random strike zone. They can be fooled into swinging at pitches outside the zone, as before, but they can even be fooled into taking strike three, too. Meanwhile, AI hitters will even stare at a fastball strike if they don't think they'll drive it. Now, AI pitchers have less control, and will try to get the human player to chase more, while allowing the human player to work the count running even an ace's count to 100 by the 7th is possible. One of the biggest bugaboos of 2K10 was the utter aggressiveness of both the pitchers and hitters, throwing strike after strike and swinging at the first strike in the zone. While it would be impossible to expect perfection, the game presents an amazingly lifelike game. Moving to the more important arena of gameplay, the game finally gets the game right. Crowds look good, but while fans will fight over foul balls at the point of landing, the rest of the crowd will act like nothing happened. Fenway Park's cameras are almost behind the pitcher, while Yankee Stadium's camera is more over the pitcher's right shoulder. The effect is that gamers will get the actual television broadcast feel of that stadium. The players in the dugout will even react to the flow of the game.Īnother new feature of 2K11 in terms of presentation is the fact that every stadium has their own unique, true-to-life camera layout. 2K11 fixes this, and not only do players and managers look less like invaders from the Uncanny Valley, but their facial expressions are more realistic, and dynamically react to events to the game. 2K10 had some nice renditions, but there was sort of a mannequin feel to them - and managers were just creepy. This assumption proved correct.įrom a pure aesthetic standpoint, MLB 2K11 has made some needed changes, starting with the player likenesses. Last year's Major League Baseball 2K10 suffered problems, but it was clear that the issues could easily be fixed in the next year's edition. While MLB 2K dealt with serious AI issues, broken gameplay and some painful glitches, The Show cruised along with intelligent design and realistic gameplay.
During this time, Major League Baseball 2K had played second fiddle to Sony's first party baseball series MLB 'XX: The Show. 2K Sports has had issues with their baseball game for a long time, especially in the past few years after Ben Brinkman's attempted total overhaul of the series was a disastrous failure.