the resigned gamer, everything I hate about the thing I love the most

Major League Baseball 2K8: Another year of disappointment

Posted by Sir Cucumber at 8:59 AM on Monday, March 10, 2008

The Resigned Gamer is proud to present its first ever "guest blogger." This original gangsta, who came up on Pong, Zork, and Lode Runner, is playing sports licenses and getting his head handed to him on XBox Live by Korean 12-year-olds so we don't have to. Everybody show some love for RPtheOG from accounting!

MLB 2K8, Major League Baseball, The Resigned GamerAs an enthusiastic New York Mets fan, I couldn't wait to see how well my Metropolitans would play on MLB 2K8. I pre-ordered in anticipation of the 2008 baseball season and ran to the store on release date to test this puppy out.

With the wife and kids in bed around 9:30 I fired up my 360. This morning my bleary-eyed thoughts are simple: The best thing I got from this purchase was the free Jose Reyes bobble head doll.

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From the minute the game loaded it was one issue or another. The first stumbling block that I encountered was getting a revised roster. The system shot me an error message saying "rosters not yet available." So I then try to trade a few minor leaguers to the Twins for Johan Santana (much like the actual deal) and was given the response that "This doesn't make our team better." Who's playing the game here, again?

I then decide to start a franchise. I go through the process and name myself GM which is where we encounter issue number two. You wouldn't think simply entering a name would be a big deal but it felt like I was using an old typewriter and manually pushing every key. It was not as simple as other games (Call of Duty 4) where if you push down the analog stick you get caps. Every movement was select CAPS, select R, select lower case, select next letter…

Batting isn't exactly easy on the eyes, or brain. You pull back the right analog stick to get the batter to move his legs; then you push the stick forward to swing the bat. My first attempt went so terribly that I quit and played home run derby. This practice helped me make better contact with the ball, but the most I could hit out of the park was three.

Pitching also pulls you through a three step process and I found myself throwing more meatballs than fastballs. For example, to throw a curve ball you need to pull the right analog stick down, rotate it clockwise and then release. If you don't rotate or release properly, you could give up a home run. To put things in perspective, I lost my first game 32 – 3.

In the end, the game is just fair. Maybe in two weeks my outlook will change, but so far no good. I think pitching is going to require a few more games to get the rhythm down and batting a few more also. I am honestly disappointed at this point, but at least it can't get much worse.

(S1W)RPtheOG …. S1Ws in the house.


You can write for us too! Though I'm not sure why you'd want to do a silly thing like that...Anyway, send ur shitz to resignedgamer@gmail.com