MLB 2K7 is so very close to greatness; it’s sitting on the precipice of being the best baseball game ever made. The problem, as is the case with most sports games these days, is that it shipped too early. In fact at times it plays more like a beta build rather than a truly finished product. If you’re a die hard baseball fan then you will certainly have a good time with the game but you cannot help but come away with the feeling that you paid $60 for a game that will not reach its full potential for another year or two. For every feature that is fantastic, another is either bugged or doesn’t work as it should.

It’s easy to initially fall in love with this game. First off, it’s gorgeous. During day games MLB 2K7 looks nearly photorealistic (it doesn’t look quite as good at night). On a 24” widescreen Dell LCD monitor, the game looks criminally good. The player models, stadiums – everything is spot on. In addition, hitting and pitching animations are superb. Pitchers use various deliveries and hitters use a multitude of (authentic) batting stances and even the swings vary depending on pitch location and speed. As far as graphics and animations are concerned, this is truly “next-gen” baseball.

The only snafu concerns fielding animations. There are a lot of strange slowdowns in the game, particularly after the ball has been put in play. Outfielders get stuck in a slowdown animation and even the base runners suffer from it on occasion. Fielding in general feels extremely sluggish. This may be the reason why you only have one, count ‘em, one fielding camera from which to choose. It is mind boggling that a game such as this only allows one view when fielding the ball and the game suffers because of it. This low camera view also removes some of the drama of the game; you cannot see a ball as it’s hit deep – you just see a cursor on the field where the ball is going to land. It totally screws up the scale of the stadiums because with such a low view, each park seems scrunched, with the outfielders too close to the infield.

The heart and soul of any great baseball game is the pitcher/batter confrontation and here the game succeeds with flying colors. In order for the game to play as well as it should out of the box you need to tweak the difficulty gameplay sliders a bit to match your taste, but after doing so you are rewarded with a brilliant design. Walks, strikeouts, called third strikes – the things that should be no-brainers but are rarely simulated well in a baseball game are nailed in MLB 2K7. Just the fact that a CPU hitter can swing and miss at a strike is a huge plus. It may sound trivial but so many games screw this up. Pitching and hitting just feels right in this game, and is by far its biggest selling point. One item to consider: hitting is hard at first. The game demands that you take the time to learn its system be it with the classic hitting method of simply pressing a button or the swing stick with uses the analog stick on the gamepad – it can be very hard to tell a ball from a strike until you spend some time with the game. Either way, you need to be patient with it. In fact it would be a bit helpful if the game came with a practice mode, which is sadly absent.

As fun as the gameplay is at times, it is equally maddening. Most of the problems stem from underdeveloped base running AI as well as a few design issues and bugs that cannot be fixed via gameplay sliders.

CPU managers have a very tough time in actually managing their team on the field. For example, the AI in incapable of doing basic roster maneuvers such as making a double switch. It also doesn’t know well enough to leave pinch hitters available late in the game, using up players as defensive subs. The AI also suffers a common baseball lament in that it doesn’t know how to sub for a pitcher properly– the double switch being just one example. There’s just no reason to allow a pitcher bat in the bottom of an inning and then pull him at the start of the next.

Base running AI is a big problem, as well. You can tweak the game sliders to change the runner aggression but that doesn’t change the fact that base runners at times have no idea what they’re doing. In one game, with the bases loaded, every runner took off as the hitter tried to bunt – the bunt was popped up to the pitcher and the defense turned a triple play as a result. At times it’s simply nonsensical.