Usually baseball games are just roster updates from the previous year, but 2K Sports gives baseball fans a more real world experience to baseball gaming. The main new feature is the overall presentation of the game. Players have closeups and stats during a game just like they do on TV, making the game a more personal experience.

Players also have their own baseball cards that the gamer can collect through ingame achievements. There is a whopping 400 of these cards and they all have a monetary value depending on the player's salary. By collecting these cards, you can put together a team to play online. It's a great way to add strategy because there is a team cap that limits how much you can spend on player acquisition. There's also a few minor league players that can be unlocked for some reason. The cards can also be traded and purchased online.

The game now uses the analog stick for pitching. This certainly gives the game a more action-oriented approach to pitching. You have to move the joystick to match an onscreen circle that flashes indicating a good pitch. But sometimes, it doesn't work properly and your pitch results in a homer for the opposing team. The game has all the standard modes you expect from a franchise this mature. The franchise mode has more options for player management.

Graphicwise, the game has better textures and player details than the previous game. The fields look great and the character animation is nice. But there's alot of bugs including graphic bugs and as extremely bad framerate. The announcers are good, but they just repeat a few sound bites over and over. More than the usual repeats in other games. The music is great.

The game has plenty of multiplayer modes, but the online play is very buggy. The single player game is also very buggy. There's just too much hit and miss when using the controller, which is death for a sports game. This game needs a few patches badly or you should wait until next year's version. Too bad about the bugs because this would have been a great game otherwise. It's rare we lower scores because of bugs, but this game is like an ant farm. If they patch it, we'll raise the score.