2K Sports' MLB Front Office Manager

Make sure your video card is "pixel shader 3.0" compatible (I believe that's what's causing all of the problems).  Check out the 2K Sports forums first.  A lot of folks have dropped $40 and can't use the software, and can't take it back because it's been opened.

I zoomed through the first preseason (Nov 3 - Spring Training) because I wanted to see what playing a game was like.

I just offered arbitration to all the players that were eligible and contracts to all of my players out of contract.  (I went with Seattle).  I didn't try to sign any free agents on the market.

The dollar amounts go up in straight 100k increments starting at 400k.  I tried to lowball a couple of older journeymen types and they wouldn't bite.  Everyone held out for their asking price.

Got to the first game of spring training and watched it.  It runs fast (probably 10-15 minutes with just one camera overhead.  It helps to turn off the picture in picture if you want to see the action when the ball is in play.  Just not enough screen real estate otherwise.  Pitch counts are too low, but they are offset by accelerated fatigue.  Felix Hernandez fatigue meter was zeroed after 60 pitches in 5 innings.  He also threw over 45 strikes which I think is a little high.  The bullpen has a strike/ball ratio closer to 1:1.

The game went to the 11th inning where Seattle won 4-3.  I walked three and the cpu (Texas) walked two with one intentional on both sides.  I was disappointed to see the cpu outfields hold on to the ball too long before throwing it in on a runner trying to score.  Twice Ichiro acted like it was a routine play while a runner rounded third.  Runner still going.  Runner still going.  Ichiro throws one time almost got the runner.  If it was a real game he would have come up throwing and thrown both of these guys out, at least the one guy.  The egregious one was a high shallow fly to right that fell in.  The runner was on third when Ichiro picked up the ball.  It was pretty sad to watch.  At least the CPU is aggressive on the basepath.  Saw a couple of steals too.

I chose auto play and the CPU made good decisions generally.  Seemed to be too many flies to grounders, but maybe not.  Too early to tell.

Oh and lots of foul balls now and again, some at bats foul of 3 or 4.  But pitch counts are overall still too low.

Haven't played it again since that last post.  What are the problems?

Apparently the save problem is unique to me.  I'm going to try saving it onto a card instead of the HDD and see if that improves.  Too bad because I was really starting to get into it.  Once I got the controls down (yeah they suck), the game was fun to me.

Originally posted by K_Mosley Hey Grambo,   Care to share any thoughts?  I can live with a bad interface is the game is good enough.  I've read about the poor sorting/filtering options, lack of split stats, etc.  How's the rest of the game?   Thanks,   Kevin

Kevin -

I don't know enough about your tastes to recommend it or not.  Personally, I was starting to have some fun in it.  I was taking my time in preseason with the Red Sox, trying to open up some salary (there is no cap, but the man upstairs gives you one anyway) in order to try and sign some free agents to key positions.  The interface is pure crap - you sort a list, view a player and then back out to the list, only to find out that you have to put in the sort parameters again.

If I can get around the save issue for myself, I know I will spend a fair amount of time playing this this summer.  Frankly I shouldn't have paid the full 40 for it - it feels like a good 20 dollar game.  But if you love these types of games and can get around some little problems, you may like it.  I loved the old OOTP series, and I even was having fun with the newer Baseball Mogul ones (although the draws for those games are the ability to play seasons from the 20th century).  I was never concerned with having a graphical interface to see the games played out, but they did a good job on this one in THAT regard, which gave me more of a feel of being at the ballpark.

Not sure if that helps or not.  If you'd like, I wouldn't object to loaning you my copy for a couple of weeks until I can figure out the save problem, and then you can at least try it before you buy it.  Let me know.

Dan