MLB 2K12 for the Wii

MLB 2K12 is the latest edition of 2K Sports’ Major League Baseball video game franchise for the Wii.

Sports games get released every year, and they usually don’t do any major innovations or updates to their core mechanics except renew the player roster. While this may be frustrating, most of us are satisfied with the same old same old as long as the gameplay is still exhilarating. MLB 2K12 for the Wii, while having little discernible difference with last year’s edition, still plays a good game of baseball.

All the ropes and subtle nuances of traditional baseball are captured in MLB 2K12. Players are allowed to pitch and bat, and different strategies can be employed in these areas. Batting involves swinging the Wii remote at an incoming ball, and the motion capture accuracy is spot on. You can throw different types of pitches too and watch in satisfaction as the competent AI swings away at empty air on the plate. The developers made it so that the computer opponent doesn’t fall for the same trick twice, so don’t expect to keep spamming curve balls just because they worked perfectly against a certain player the first time around.

The Wii Major League Baseball 2K12 delivers the icing on the cake in the form of non-repetitious announcer commentary. Steve Phillips and Gary Thorne do an excellent job of keeping things fresh by having specific lines to say for pretty much every player on the roster, and you never seem to hear awkward rants that don’t match the action on the field.

The Major League Baseball 2K12 Wii game also has the requisite Franchise mode present in every sports title. This serves as the main dish where you’ll slug it out with other teams on the road to the World Series championship. Other modes are Tournament where you forego the grind of the season, Mini-Diamond which lets you play ball amidst less conventional locations, and the series’ original Home Run Derby wherein you commandeer an excellent batter and hit long ones.

With multiplayer support and a cool soundtrack selection, everything you need to play baseball on the Wii with is here.

On the other hand, graphics of MLB 2K12 on the Wii is simply bad, and not in a good way. The game could have done much better in this area, but instead the players look as rigid and artificial as ever. Of course, this is in comparison to the versions of other consoles, but still, the Wii is much more capable of portraying good visuals than the kind MLB 2K12 has to offer.

Also, despite the gameplay being above average, MLB 2K12 has so little improvements compared to its previous version that you might be tempted to ask the question “Why bother at all?” The worn-out swinging and flicking with the Wii remote to play baseball has been tried countless times, and doing it all over again in MLB 2K12 seems like an exercise in futility. If you’re a good fan of baseball, you might give this one a shot, but don’t expect anything new.

MLB 2K12 can be played on the Wii console. It has single and multiplayer modes.

MLB 2K12 has solid baseball action, but nothing we haven’t seen before. Everything you’ve come to expect from baseball games is all here, but sadly there’s nothing innovative about MLB 2K12 that might set it apart from the crowd. If you own previous versions or another competent baseball title, MLB 2K12 might not be worth it. However, if this is your first baseball foray, then it’s a decent purchase.