8/22/2025:

   Been back to dabblin’ on the Deck lately. My goal was to play and write about Driver 3, but I can’t get it running smoothly enough. I’m still deep into the current baseball season, so figured I’d finally check out one of those old 2K baseball games.

   From all of Griffey Jr.’s SNES games up to The Show ‘25, I‘ve probably played more hours of baseball video games than any other type of game and definitely consider myself a connoisseur. However, I wouldn’t say I’m picky nor have super high standards for rating a baseball game. If it’s fun enough, has fluid gameplay, accessible/rewarding hitting, and gives me some ‘inside baseball’, I’m usually satisfied.

   During the PSX era, the Triple Play series checked off more of those boxes than any other baseball game at the time, really upped the ante for baseball video games, and became my go-to series from ‘99-05. MVP Baseball 2005 (Triple Play with a rebrand) is often cited as one of best baseball games ever. I disagree. I think it’s fine.

   It’s certainly fun, and well polished…for a PSX level Triple Play series game. But I feel by 2005, EA’s approach and formula was feeling outdated and not up to par with the technical capabilities the PS2 era had to offer. It’s a series heavy on accessibility and arcade-more-than-sim style of baseball. That worked wonderfully back when graphical capability and physics-based animations were very limited. You almost had to go more arcade, as true sim style wasn’t quite possible given those limitations, and would’ve resulted in some buggy snoozers. But by the time we had the capabilities of the PS2, there was a lot of room for advancement, both graphically and gameplay-wise.

   Which brings me to the 2K series (fka World Series Baseball). In the early 2000s, 2K Sports took over the genre for a bit by utilizing well-defined & more life-like graphics, slick presentation, animated crowds, gameplay accuracy and overall polish down to the finest details. Notably so with the Sega Dreamcast and continuing into the PS2/Xbox era; before this licensing bs made it so every major sport is only allowed one maker, and they became mainly known as the NBA people.

   I was away from heavy gaming as the 2010s approached, and by the time I returned there was only The Show available baseball-wise, so the 2K baseball games have always been a blind spot. But I’ve heard good things about MLB 2K7 (from Kush Games, nice), so decided to give it a go and it rocks!

   They killed it in all aspects of this game. Graphics, presentation, animations, fluidity, accessibility, and overall gameplay are all superb. Even better is that it moves more into sim than arcade territory, and feels both playable and challenging, the way baseball fans most enjoy. I have no real complaints here, and am extremely impressed as to how closely it nailed the blueprint for modern baseball games. The Show is very well done almost every year, but after playing MLB 2K7 , I see how much was continued from this series, as well as how much is left to be desired from modern games when it comes to character, presentation, and design.

   Pitching is essentially the meter type we’ve been used to for ages, but I mainly enjoy how your pitcher being rattled manifests into the mechanism more-so than previous or current games. The ball gets very shaky when rattled and makes it more difficult to pinpoint your throw. Simple but effective.

   Fielding is a bit difficult, as there’s no CPU assist. I like it this way. You have to react with the hit accordingly, or else it’s extra bases. To make up for this, throwing to bases is easy, as there’s no meter for accuracy, you just press the corresponding button and it gets there. I like this combination of balance as opposed to; easy, assisted fielding with more difficult metered throwing which we see in The Show. I prefer this, as in real life, and from a gameplay perspective, having more focus based on reaction to the ball in play is a lot more satisfying and challenging overall than worrying about your throw to the base/teammate after fielding it. And in real life, the throw is often a much more automated action than fielding.

   As for batting, it’s simple as shit, just how I like it. Forget aiming a cursor in a split second and constantly whiffing on pitches. Here we get that good old school timing and directional hitting. Just time it up and aim where you wanna send it. It’s less accurate from a control perspective, and adds some randomness to the equation, but overall it’s just more fun and less frustrating than cursor based hitting. Well worth the trade off in my opinion.

   You can even argue with the ump to boost team morale, tap X to increase your temper, and even choose to get ejected to really boost morale. I haven’t seen this as an option in years, and think it should be in every baseball game ever.

   After playing this, I went back and gave MVP Baseball 2005 a go, just so I could get a more accurate comparison, and 2K7 blows it out of the water. I can’t earnestly play and enjoy MVP Baseball 2005 in 2025, as for MLB 2K7 I most definitely can and will be. It’s almost 20yrs post release and I still give it a solid 8/10. If I had played it when it first came out, it’d be an easy 10/10.