MLB 2006
Posted May 1, 2005
Last year's MLB 2005 was not that spectacular of a baseball game, and I have never been a fan of 989 in general as far as sports games go. After completing my first exhibition game, my opinion on both the franchise and the game house changed completely. The game looks good and plays great and the amount of detail in between is very impressive.
Gameplay:
MLB 2006's meat and potatoes, like all baseball games, come with the hitting and pitching. Hitting comes with a number of twists. In the rookie mode, all hitting is based on timing. As the difficulty mode increases, you have to take more into consideration for hitting including pitch location and type. You are given the ability to guess the type of pitch any time and if you do so correctly, you will have an extra advantage when swinging. Players can also choose which direction to bunt, hit a ground ball, or hit a sac fly. This is done very easily with the right joystick.
Pitching is pretty intuitive and based on timing. You tap X to determine pitch speed and then again to choose the release point. As the pitcher gets more tired, or his confidence decreases after giving up big hits the timing becomes more difficult. This system works really well.
One area of gameplay that did not work so well to me is the baserunning. Some hits that should have been triples in real life were held to singles because certain batters are just too slow and the computer fields very efficiently. This isn't to say offense is impossible, and I was pretty pleased with the distribution of singles, doubles, and HRs. Triples just seem to be too elusive.
The final aspect of actual baseball gameplay is fielding, which is all handled very well and intuitively. The player has the option to have a large indicator of where the ball will drop.
As far as the rest of the game goes, there are some fantastic details. The best part of the game is the franchise mode. Players have control over so many little things of the game like the mode of team transportation to bobble head promotions. Players can also control the minor league teams, all of which are accurate as far as rosters and stadiums go. You can also train players to increase skills. The franchise mode is really well developed.
Graphics:
At first glance, I was not impressed with the graphics but I came to appreciate them. The player models look okay, but really shine in their animations. Many players have very distinct warmup rituals and MLB 2006 captures these perfectly. Each player looks like their real life counterpart too, which is always a crapshoot (See: big heads in Madden). The fans are also fully 3D models.
Some of the details get a little redundant, like the plane flying over Shea Stadium or the statistics displayed for each batter (which are exactly the same). Other than small quirks, the visuals are deceptively great. They don't wow you, but they certainly get the job done.
Audio:
The sound is good, there is just not enough of it. There are sounds coming from the crowd, the color commentator, the announcer, and anything else you could imagine. Taking into account all the various sounds is nice, but there just was not enough material recorded. You can plan on hearing pretty much the same stuff every game.
The music featured in the game is mostly rock with some rap songs remixed in rock stylings. It can get grating if you are tooling around with the menus a lot.
Conclusion:
I had a blast reviewing this game. The details in the playing were done very well, with lots of baseball idiosyncrasies covered. The game is fun and the graphics look good. While the audio leaves a little to be desired, it is not enough to take away from a really good game. Add to this the fantastic franchise, Eye Toy compatibility and other favorites like home run derby and you have a heck of a game.
Gameplay:
MLB 2006's meat and potatoes, like all baseball games, come with the hitting and pitching. Hitting comes with a number of twists. In the rookie mode, all hitting is based on timing. As the difficulty mode increases, you have to take more into consideration for hitting including pitch location and type. You are given the ability to guess the type of pitch any time and if you do so correctly, you will have an extra advantage when swinging. Players can also choose which direction to bunt, hit a ground ball, or hit a sac fly. This is done very easily with the right joystick.
Pitching is pretty intuitive and based on timing. You tap X to determine pitch speed and then again to choose the release point. As the pitcher gets more tired, or his confidence decreases after giving up big hits the timing becomes more difficult. This system works really well.
One area of gameplay that did not work so well to me is the baserunning. Some hits that should have been triples in real life were held to singles because certain batters are just too slow and the computer fields very efficiently. This isn't to say offense is impossible, and I was pretty pleased with the distribution of singles, doubles, and HRs. Triples just seem to be too elusive.
The final aspect of actual baseball gameplay is fielding, which is all handled very well and intuitively. The player has the option to have a large indicator of where the ball will drop.
As far as the rest of the game goes, there are some fantastic details. The best part of the game is the franchise mode. Players have control over so many little things of the game like the mode of team transportation to bobble head promotions. Players can also control the minor league teams, all of which are accurate as far as rosters and stadiums go. You can also train players to increase skills. The franchise mode is really well developed.
Graphics:
At first glance, I was not impressed with the graphics but I came to appreciate them. The player models look okay, but really shine in their animations. Many players have very distinct warmup rituals and MLB 2006 captures these perfectly. Each player looks like their real life counterpart too, which is always a crapshoot (See: big heads in Madden). The fans are also fully 3D models.
Some of the details get a little redundant, like the plane flying over Shea Stadium or the statistics displayed for each batter (which are exactly the same). Other than small quirks, the visuals are deceptively great. They don't wow you, but they certainly get the job done.
Audio:
The sound is good, there is just not enough of it. There are sounds coming from the crowd, the color commentator, the announcer, and anything else you could imagine. Taking into account all the various sounds is nice, but there just was not enough material recorded. You can plan on hearing pretty much the same stuff every game.
The music featured in the game is mostly rock with some rap songs remixed in rock stylings. It can get grating if you are tooling around with the menus a lot.
Conclusion:
I had a blast reviewing this game. The details in the playing were done very well, with lots of baseball idiosyncrasies covered. The game is fun and the graphics look good. While the audio leaves a little to be desired, it is not enough to take away from a really good game. Add to this the fantastic franchise, Eye Toy compatibility and other favorites like home run derby and you have a heck of a game.