For a few years now, 2K Sports’MLB 2Kgames have featured analog-stick controls for pitching, hitting, and fielding. But Sony’sMLB The Showfranchise has stuck with simple button presses until this year;MLB 11 The Showwill be the first entry in the series to ship with analog controls. I sawMLB 2K11for the second time last week, and during the session, I asked Sean Bailey, a designer on the game at Visual Concepts, for his thoughts onThe Showfinally adopting analog controls.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking what other people do [well],” he told me, acknowledging that the pitch and swing analyzers with ball trails inMLB 2K10originated from EA Sports’ previous-generation classic,MVP Baseball 2005. The folks at Visual Concepts felt reassured to seeThe Show— a franchise that has long been viewed as superior toMLB 2K— taking after a 2K Sports innovation.
But Bailey pointed out that analog controls aren’t inherently good or bad; “it’showit’s done, notwhatyou do.” From what he’s heard ofMLB 11, he doesn’t think too much of its analog pitching:
Every single one of their pitches is going to be down-up. Well, you know, as a2Kplayer, that’s going to get boring to me, because that’s a four-seam fastball — that’s the easiest pitch in our game.
[Editor’s note: The analog pitching inMLB 2Krequires right-stick gestures that are specific to each pitch type. I recently had a hands-on demo ofMLB 11, and I’ll post a full preview — including my thoughts on its new analog-stick controls — after I spend some more time with it today. In my time withMLB 11, I didn’t find its analog pitching to be quite as cut-and-dry as the way Bailey put it, but he’s correct in that you pull the stick down and then push it upward to throw every pitch in the game. In a nutshell: if you’re throwing to the left side of the strike zone, you’ll have to push up and left, and vice versa; it’s challenging in its own way.]
The battle for baseball supremacy between the two franchises is really heating up now that both series will offer analog controls. Bailey understandably prefers his own game; which one will you favor come March 8th, when bothMLB 11 The ShowandMLB 2K11launch? (In addition to anMLB 11preview, I’ll soon have more details on the improvements that Visual Concepts is making to the game modes inMLB 2K11.)
