Major League Baseball 2K11 For Your PSP

Pitching a perfect game depends on many factors. Sure, the pitch transferee must hit his spots, mixing the speed of his pitches and stay cool under increasing pressure, but no pitcher is solely responsible for keeping the 27 batters off base. Catcher has to summon a smart play, fielders have to do a few big plays, and hitters have to make a few mistakes.

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Baseball games often suffer in creating realistic fielding because fielders all look and act the same way. Sure, Ichiro has a better arm rating and therefore throw more accurately than someone like Coco Crisp, but often it's just a behind-the-scenes state. And when it comes to tracking down balls every outfielder is only limited by their speed. I have never found a game that really made your defensive unit so much. I've only played 2K11 for about an hour, but the fielding changes shows some real promise.

Each fielder has a fielding rating. When a ball is hit into the outfield, a white circle appears under fielder, which gives a general sense of where the ball can land. The better fielding rating, the smaller the circle (and thus the easier it is to tell exactly where the ball is on the way). It's a smart change that can really change up to play in the outfield. For once, I actually had to wonder if I should not drag a poor defensive outfielder and swap someone with less pop in their bats, but larger in scope.


EA's MVP Baseball had the best throw meter and 2K11 have not peaked, but it has a similar application. When you throw, you charge up a meter with a green "sweet spot" and a red "oh crap" zone. The better a player's arm rating, the longer the sweet spot. But beyond this, is to hit the red does not mean you automatically make a mistake. Say you have Vlad Guerrero, who has a solid arm. Red might just mean that he prefers the third Basem out of the bag when Pablo Sandoval would probably launch the ball into the cheap seats.

With so little time with MLB 2K11, I can not say how well this plays out over the Majors, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. The fielders are also a bit sharper than before. They know when a ball is the third out and will throw the ball to one side and jog to the dugout. An easy grounder to shortstop randomly scooped up, rather than having him run two feet in full sprint animation. These small details certainly the case.

While Fielding has changed much, the core of pitching (MLB 2K10 strength) is still relatively untouched. If you skipped last year's game, here is the easy core of it - every pitch has a unique movement in the right thumbstick and your timing and precision with this motion helps to determine success in your pitch. It worked well in 2010 and it works well in 2011.

But there is something on the other side of the plate has been added that affect the pitching. There is now a state for how many pitches a batter average of one plate appearance. Basically, 2K11 whether a batter tends to extend an at-bat by taking a lot of pitches (or fouling a lot of them out). If balanced right, could this little detail add an extra layer of realism to the pitcher-batter matchups.

Want to be perfect?
The hard thing about making a baseball game is to get the details right, including the close relationship between pitching, batting and fielding. In real baseball, batter is trends can pitch you throw, and its intended location lead fielders to subtly shift their position. A perfect game is not just about the places you chuck, but where your fielders are and how they expect the ball off the bat. Can MLB 2K11 pull everything out?

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I'd be a fool to say yes or no without spending a dozen hours pitching game. What I can say is that it feels much closer than 2K's baseball game has felt since switching to MLB 2K name. I saw a lot of little inconsistencies (players against the wall for easy pop-ups, audio deliver a wrong cue), but these are the kinds of little things that can be fixed in the few weeks leading to a game's release. It may not end up being a leap forward, but it's certainly a step forward. And it is promising.