Wherever those games were taking place, the baseball of 2K10 usually appears to be unfolding here on planet Earth. When batting, you will have to be patient in identifying pitches, rather than taking a rip at everything thrown. Pitchers often straddle the outer-edge of the strikezone, and a batter caught trying to pull a ball way out there will often tap weak grounders to the pitcher and second baseman. Derek Jeter’s most enviable quality—the ability to sit back on a pitch and go with ...

Let’s not drag this out too much, it hurts.

TB2 is all spectacle, but it’s well done. Gargantuan sluggers take powerful rips at incoming pitches, practically jumping out of their cleats; pitchers throw fastballs almost exclusively in the triple digits and curveballs with such acute breaks that head-high tosses end up low and outside. Line drives scream from the batter’s box to the wall; retrieving fielders send missiles back to the infield. An alarming percentage of balls hit are homeruns (and more are doubles). Many that otherwise would ...

Things appear promising enough from the outset: players are treated to their team warming up while introductory commentary is provided by Gary Thorne and Steve Phillips. The reliably ineloquent Jon Miller/Joe Morgan duo has been retired, but readers familiar with Firejoemorgan.com or, more generally, the sport of baseball, will understand in short order this new team is not necessarily an improvement. The stadiums are bright to the point of appearing somewhat cartoonish, but they do sport the tr...

I’m a beat-‘em-up enthusiast.

There is a brilliant idea that inspires Uplink: Hacker Elite, and it largely rests at the intersection of the state of present day technology, and the timeless intrigue that surrounds crime and criminals, so deeply-rooted that it taps human nature. There have long been games depicting crime, going all the way back to the Atari 2600, and the monumental Grand Theft Auto series is inarguably the one that has most recently brought the issue of game crime and violence into the limelight...

There is a glee about Sly Spy, a maniacal urge to so blatantly steal and simultaneously disrespect the source material it pays cynical homage to, the wonderful 007 canon, that makes it a grotesque spectacle, somehow both irritating and intriguing at the same time. I’ve always appreciated poorly made side-scrolling action games that are in obvious replication of the James Bond saga (I’m one of six living fans of the campy and tedious Rolling Thunder), and I couldn’t help but ...

Mug Smashers, though devastatingly threatening by name, is more of a womanly slap across the cheek than any truly bruising smash. It isn’t as good as Final Fight or Streets of Rage, and certainly doesn’t appear to be too worried about it. It’s bad, and surprisingly content with that.

Perhaps more than any other video game, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is firmly entrenched in a part of my mind from which it cannot be uprooted, forever connected to a reality that is experienced by most boys in childhood – one that involves baseball and summer days that arrived and parted too quickly. For this reason, I am not merely biased; I am so maniacally obsessed with Griffey, so overexposed to its elements from years of play, that, to me, it really has los...

It’s difficult to say which side of this battle is the more feebleminded; it’s a close race. Enemy henchmen run on-screen and fire a shot at you within a second of appearing. Because they are unbelievably stupid, they can fire only on a line – they don’t duck down or aim upwards or diagonally – just straight ahead.