Ah, the ball field, the sharp crack of the bat on canvas, the smell of oil on a well worn glove, all that gratuitous spitting. Sadly, for me, MLB 2K11 is the closest I’ve come to the experience of attending a baseball game. Unfortunately I live on the other side of the planet from the USA, the only country in the world where baseball is taken seriously.

Even so I'd like to watch a game in a stadium somewhere in the US one day. It’s such an essential piece of America, you can’t avoid it. Now after playing MLB 2K11 I’ll even know what the hell’s going on!

Being the latest in an annual series of sport games MLB is a little intimidating to the complete and utter novice like me. The game presumes you at least know how baseball games are played and what different positions involve. My knowledge doesn’t go much further past Charlie Brown cartoons and that Charlie Sheen movie where he wore glasses. So there was definitely a period of scrambling familiarity where I pressed buttons until a game started. The menu system is awkward to navigate and the option for a Quick Game, drops you into a battle between two elite, top of the league teams who quickly establish you as the dunce player.

Under options you can choose drills, allowing you to practise the basics and plays that regularly occur, stealing bases and the like. I strongly recommend new players to spend a good few hours getting used to the drills and learning how to bat. Batting is, as it’s supposed to be, damn hard, but the elation that comes with making your first run is well worth the hard work to get there.

To start it’s best for novices to play the My Play create a player mode and start off in the dinky leagues. Players don’t put up a lot of challenge and it gives you a good chance to hone your skills before you try anything more professional. The downside is if you’re only playing as one player, and you don’t get to Pitch, you could be standing in right field doing bugger all for whole innings, which is not fun. As with similar 2K sports games there are number of sliders you can use to improve stats on your players, so yes, you ran rort games with a team of super roided up players… which I guess is kinda like real professional baseball actually.

Speaking of which, once you’ve got the skills down pat (or at least managed to hit the ball once) you can try a hand at the Franchise part of the game. You run a team and in addition to playing as the pitcher and batter you get to handle all the management side of things like trades. This where some of MLB 2K11’s new features like Dynamic Player Rating System, or DRPS (he he derp), comes in. Whenever you fire up the game it syncs with 2K’s servers and updates player data with the last four weeks of that players actual activity in the season. I’m not even that big on sport games but that is an immensely cool feature; it impacts on the players abilities in the game and trade value.

Visually the game looks pretty good at times, but ugly at others. The players movement animations are good, looking natural and smooth for the most part. There is a rather common incidence of odd glitching problems, I’ve had players walking out to the batting box with their legs sunk into the ground and fielders run side ways from the knees down while the rest of their body keeps doing the standing animation; hilarious but distracting. The players don’t look so hot close up; their faces are pretty wooden, lost deep in the uncanny valley. Not quite Tobey Maguire in Spiderman 3 The Game terrifying; but certainly not as good as you’d expect (I still wake up screaming some nights). As for environments again while the stadiums look pretty good the crowds look rubbish. Overall the graphics are probably the games weakest feature.

Audibly the game sounds good, sound effects are superb and the commentary is beneficial, although occasionally a bit repetitive. The music that plays over much of the game isn’t bad, but often it’s distracting and you’ll find yourself turning it down or off all together.

A little research turns up that MLB 2K11 is considered the ugly step sister of baseball games, to the apparently superior MLB The Show, a PS3 exclusive. Personally I found MLB 2K11 to be a good quality sports title, thick with stats and details for fans of the sport, if a little unforgiving of the ignorant. Obviously, in Australia we’re not super keen on baseball (not that we’re much better for dull spectator sports, watch the cricket? I’d rather cut my toe nails). But if you’ve ever had an interest in America’s national sport MLB 2K11 is a good introduction to the teams and the game, plus you’ll have some fun along the way.