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Hitting, on the other hand, is downright painful. Granted, even the best major leaguer's batting average will be about .340 or so, so it shouldn't be overly simple to connect the bat to the ball. However, despite many hours of practice, successful at-bats are 100% the product of guessing right; it's simply impossible to gauge the incoming pitch style and location, no matter how you adjust the batting camera. Basically, most of the time you'll be Pete Incaviglia – strikeout or home run, with very little in between. Each method of hitting – Swing Stick or Classic – has its own characteristics, and after spending a bunch of time with both I've settled with the old-school button concept. The Stick just doesn't seem to respond as quickly as I would hope, although the buttons feel a bit sluggish as well.
Even with these complaints, though, MLB 2K7 is still completely addictive. The well-designed season and franchise modes are sufficiently in-depth, containing the requisite roster-shaping ability, player progression, and financial wheeling and dealing that every armchair GM loves. You will find some strange occurrences as a season moves along, both good and bad. At one point, a mid-season game I was playing was rained out in the 4th inning, and had to be rescheduled as part of a doubleheader the next day. As I advanced to play that two-fer, the starting pitcher who'd just thrown four tough innings the previous day was right back on the mound to start the new one, his arm strength brimming at 100 percent. While I was a little happy about that, since I was planning on reaching into the pen or the minor leagues for someone to pitch in his stead, it was one of those moments where the game divorces itself from reality.
On the other hand, one of the great little quirks that I noticed is that you can save a season game in the middle of the action, then come back to it any time in the future. Considering that even the shortest matchup could easily take you 45 minutes from start to finish, this feature is tremendous. Plenty of times I was able to save a game in the middle innings, only to come back and jump right in a few hours or days later. Simply brilliant.
It's easier to notice problems in a game when so much of it is so good, and that's the case with MLB 2K7. Despite a list of issues, there's no denying that in many ways it could be considered something close to (but not yet) a masterpiece. MLB 2K7 looks and sounds amazing, offers serious gamers hundreds of hours of gameplay, and is a nifty way to show off that expensive game console and hi-def television to your friends and family. It's better than its predecessor in every way possible, and will satiate your baseball jones all season long. The foundation is now set for the series to take off and dominate for awhile; I'm expecting even bigger and better things next season. As it is, though, this year's effort does the trick quite nicely.
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