2nd baseman for the Boston Red Sox, Dustin Pedroia!

I know nothing of baseball outside of my love for The Bigs and MLB Power Pros. Is the choice of Pedroia a good thing? At least the guy doesn’t look like a juicer. From the release;

Today Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. is pleased to announce the signing of Boston Red Sox Second Baseman and 2008 American League MVP Dustin Pedroia as cover athlete for MLB 09 The Show™. The game will be available in Spring 2009, exclusively for the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™), PlayStation®2 and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) .

I’ve heard good things about The Show, and since it doesn’t look like we’re ever getting a sequel to The Bigs maybe I should move on. Anyone out there have any experience with this Sony-only series they’d like to share?

When 2K’s Top Spin 2 was released for the 360 in March of 2006 the game immediately felt broken to me, a veteran with countless hours logged with the first Top Spin (then developed by Microsoft’s in house sports team) on Xbox. Something felt amiss and that left me feeling betrayed. Eventually a time came when there was nothing else to play so I popped it back in to see if I missed something along the way. I came to know the slightly different feel and eventually ended up spending a fair amount of time with it until the game started to outpace how fast my career character was advancing his talents. I was trying to play at a higher level than my player would allow based on his skill point distribution and I ended up in a loop with no satisfying solution.

2K decided to go back, strip the game down and rebuild it. They’ve revamped the look, presentation, career system, online play and most notably the controls. How did they fare? Hit the jump, open up that new can of balls (not that kind Jimmy!) and getting ready to return serve. Continue Reading »