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I’m not a huge baseball fan by any means, but I’m having a fucking great time playing MLB 2K7. The presentation is absolutely amazing, and the pitching controls (which I’m told are similar to last year’s version) are super-cool. Like I said, baseball doesn’t really rev my engine like football or basketball, but every so often a digital version of that boring sport will satiate my sports game bug.

Through the years I’ve been gripped, for a time, by Bases Loaded, Tecmo Baseball, Clutch Hitter (I still want to own that arcade machine), and Triple Play Baseball, but none of those has actually increased my fairly basic comprehension of the strategy of the sport to the degree that 2K7 does. But for all of its winning ways as a teacher of the layman (ably assisted by the 100% committed voice acting of commentators John Miller and Joe Morgan, and some smart choices by the AI in regards to what VO to play at what times), that quality is absolutely crushed to the floor under the boot of gorgeous presentation. (In a good way.)

To describe how good the presentation actually is in MLB 2K7, et me describe to you a fairly typical sequence from the game (typical, that is, in its detail and simulation of human camerawork):

- Manny jacks a homer and the game initiates a hand-held camera replay. The camera position is located in the air about 20 feet above and behind first base, looking down the first base line towards home, where Manny has started a drop-the-bat-slowly-and-watch-my-sweet-homer animation.

- The camera, which emulates a handheld very well, shakes, zooms, recenters, zooms, recenters, and finally dials in a focus on Manny’s face as he starts jogging to first. He breaks into a grin, on which the camera zooms further.

- The camera zooms back away (with appropriate shakiness and laggy focusing) from Manny and we get to see more of the infield again, including the pitcher, who is clearly pissed off about hanging one over the middle of the plate.

- Now here’s the real genius part: the camera is so well synchronized with the HR reaction animations that it appears to the player (or at least it did to this player) that a human camera operator has seen the pitcher reacting and is interested in it. The camera quickly recenters, focuses, zooms, and finally refocuses again on the pitcher’s face, just in time to catch him mouthing a choice couple of four-letter words. Excellent.

Filed by sean at 11:22 am under games
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