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If you liked Wii Sports baseball but felt the gameplay was too limited, MLB 2k8 might be right for you. The season and franchise modes allow you to pick your favorite team with a season length of your choice. While playing minor league teams is absent from the Wii version, you can still call up and send down players, which is very useful if your team has good prospects.
The players batting and pitching styles are based on their real life counterparts. Knowing a players strengths and weaknesses will help your game (for example, Tim Wakefield has a mean knuckle curve, just like in real life). Like real baseball the catcher calls for a pitch type and location. Sometimes he will call for one at the corner or one slightly off the plate, depending on the batter and the strike/ball situation. Outsmarting the batter is fun and rewarding, particulary on higher difficulty levels.
Anyone who has tried Wii Sports baseball knows that swinging a controller to bat is much more enjoyable than pushing a button or joystick. The only flaw in the batting game is the check swing - if you don't follow through on your swing, you will do a check swing. Inevitably you will check your swing when you wanted a full swing, or do a full swing when you wanted to hold back. This become less frequent with practice, but it can get annoying very quickly.
While the motion controls of pitching and baserunning work okay, the same cannot be said about the defense. The "smart throw," which is supposed to throw to the right base when you flick the wiimote, isn't always that smart. I recommend getting used to throwing manually with the control pad. Jumping and diving are also motion controlled, and that means too often your player will dive when you really should have jumped. Like batting, these controls will work better after some practice.
After getting over some control issues, I must say the game is still quite enjoyable. The best feature of the game is the totally customizable difficulty. After playing a couple dozen games you will want to make the game more challenging, and the difficulty sliders allow you to do just that. Winning just doesn't mean anything if you don't lose occaisionally. After playing over a hundred games I still lose to teams that should beat me.
Maybe not the best game overall, but definately my favorite baseball game. It should find a place in your collection if you're into sports games.
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Linear Mode
