I've been a baseball fan - a Dodger fan, specifically - all my life, and yet I had never experienced a baseball season quite like 2004. Chalk it up to a Dodger ballclub that's been underachieving basically since they last won the World Series, way back in 1988.

Chalk it up to their last true MVP candidate being Kirk Gibson, in that same 1988, before Adrian Beltre came along to set Los Angeles on fire.

Chalk it up to getting to experience the rush of the playoff chase (and two playoff games) live and in person.

And chalk it up to those crazy Boston Red Sox, who did two things I never expected to see: come from behind in a best-of-seven after trailing 3 games to none, and win the whole flippin' enchilada. I'm not even a Red Sox fan, and it still feels weird to say it: The Boston Red Sox are World Champions. Where are we, a Stephen King novel?

At any rate, last season was the greatest of my life, both as a Dodger fan, and as a baseball fan in general, and it left me in withdrawal for the entire offseason, wishing I had a baseball game that would a) feed the fix, and b) do something to recreate the feelings last season awakened.

I followed with great interest the development of Major League Baseball 2k5 and MLB 2006, the announcement of Pennant Chase Baseball from Nintendo, and, of course, MVP Baseball 2005, particularly after the bombshell that was Take-Two's limited exclusivity arrangement with the various MLB entities.

The first to hit shelves was MVP 2005, and so I did what any junkie going through withdrawal would do: snapped it up the minute it became available. Any port in a storm, or so the saying goes, and MVP 2004 was still a solid game if you could get past some of the larger flaws. Maybe, I rationalized, EA had fixed the flaws and delivered a game to be proud of.

Two weeks, and more games than I can count (and still keep my pride), and the answer is crystal clear: not only did EA Sports fix what was broken in MVP 2004, they delivered a game far beyond the expectations I held for any of this year's titles. For a baseball fan used to excitement followed by letdown, this was a pleasant surprise.

Those of you who read my MLB 2005 review last season know that I drooled over the depth of its Franchise Mode, and so it should come as no surprise that I wanted to sink my teeth into MVP 2005's Owner Mode. That, naturally, was the first feature I jumped into, although I would come to regret that decision (more on that later).

As you begin, MVP asks you to choose a team, and gives you a bevy of options from which to choose. Do you want the DH in both leagues? Neither? The same as in the MLB? It's up to you. You can also set leaguewide budget sizes, in a general fashion: small, medium, and huge. Other options are here, too, including the ability to turn the new Hitter's Eye on or off, or to enable the "Cooperstown Effect" for games involving old-timers. If you picture the highlight reels of Willie Mays' "Catch," you have an idea of what the "Cooperstown Effect" is.

The first thing you have to do in Owner Mode, once those options are squared away, is to design a ballpark. This is the critical component of Owner Mode, around which pretty much the entire mode revolves, since the ultimate goal is to make as much money as you can in 30 seasons of play. You'll start with a pretty basic park, although you'll have some customizing to do both at the start and as you progress through the season.

MVP 2005 will ask you to choose the location of the ballpark - in suburbia, or by the bay? - the colors of the seats and fences, the dimensions - a Green Monsteresque wall in right, or a short left field porch? - and, of course, it will ask you to name your park.

Once you've done that, and you'll find yourself running the team, with (or without, if you choose) the assistance of a financial advisor. You have the ability to compete for the available coaches, scouts, and managers from the word "go," or start with the defaults and work from there. If you choose the latter, but find yourself unsatisfied with who you've got, you can hire and fire replacements at any time (this one's for you, Mr. Steinbrenner).

You'll also find a variety of tools related to running the team. On the financial side of the ball, you have the ability to sign players to new contracts, either because their current one is expiring, or because they're unhappy with the one they've got. You can choose which level (A, AA, AAA, or MLB) the contract is for, what their status is (for pitchers, your choices are relief, spot starter, starter, or ace), and, finally, the standard salary/# of years.

Players will make requests based on their expected playing time, their current salary, and their performance, although you're free to tweak that. Just don't piss them off too badly, or it may haunt you in the long run. Fortunately, players seem less likely to request (or accept) a demotion in status than they did in MLB 2004, where it wasn't uncommon for an Ace to ask for a new contract as a reliever.

It's still possible, but because demands are tied more closely to things like performance and playing time, if you see a request like that, it probably means you aren't using the guy much.

Keep in mind, your created ballpark has a tiny capacity to begin with, and will seat just 20,000 fans, so you need to make sure your payroll is in line with your expected income. You have a variety of ways to boost this income, thankfully.

You can build concession stands to bring in extra revenue, ranging from expensive replica jerseys to beer and peanuts. You can build additional seating, although you don't start with enough money to do this, and it will take a while for you to grow to the full 50,000+ capacity that your stadium will ultimately support.

The concessions will only have a subtle effect on your overall revenues, however; the bulk of your income will be tied to the perceived "prestige" of your team, which in part takes its cue from your payroll. If you cut too much payroll, you may find that your media contract has been revised downward, leading to less TV and radio income for the year.

So while you may need to offload those deadbeat contracts (Darren Dreifort, I'm looking at you), the better option in the long run is going to be increasing fan excitement, and you can do that two ways: win, and give stuff away. Winning takes care of itself, but it takes much longer, and the resulting increase in attendance is counterbalanced by the fact that you have expenditures even on the road, while you make money only at home. It's probably a good idea, then, to keep home attendance as high as possible.

You can offer Promotional Days throughout the season, with around 15-20 options for giveaway goodies. Some goodies are going to be more effective than others, naturally; a free jersey is probably going to draw more people than a free bobblehead. This costs money too, though, so be sure to use your most effective promotions when you most need them. If you're the Dodgers, say, you probably don't want to be giving away jerseys during the September series with the hated Giants.

Another way to draw fans is to keep them occupied at the games. You can offer them pitching and batting cages, where they can test their skills, an arcade in which they can play MVP Baseball 2005, and so forth. This will help, but probably the most important factor to fan attendance is the almighty dollar.

You see, while you're trying to rake in every buck you can, they're naturally reluctant to part with said greenbacks. If you jack the ticket prices up to the maximum, you're quickly going to find that your stadium is fairly empty. The same holds true for beer, peanuts, and other necessities of fan life. If your beer costs $9, you won't sell very many of those. The key, then, is to find a happy medium (at least, until the playoffs when you can get away with those outrageous prices). Keep in mind as well that each level of your stadium is priced differently. You'll want a mix of cheap seats and snob seats.

It's worth noting that as cool as the financials are in MVP 2005, they still run second to MLB 2006, which goes beyond MVP by allowing you to set parking prices, build improvements to keep your players happy and healthy, set your team's travel arrangements, and even sign TV/radio contracts and advertising deals. In other words, if you're going to base your purchase on the "owner" aspect of the game, you might want to wait for our MLB 2006 review before you make your choice.

On the field, however, it's quite a different matter. As was the case in MVP 2004, you have the ability to play not just your major league games, but the games for your minor league squads as well, and this year brings the introduction of your A ball affiliate into the mix.

The minor league stadiums don't offer quite the same variety as the major league ballparks, but the MVP Rewards system (you earn points for accomplishing various feats in the different game modes) allows you to unlock an assortment of classic stadiums, so if you're unhappy with the selection offered for the minor league teams, you can still play in some parks you wouldn't otherwise see in the majors.

And, of course, the gameplay has been improved in a number of ways from last year's game. The classic pitcher/batter interface that put the MVP franchise on the map two seasons ago is back, with yet another revolutionary addition: the Hitter's Eye.


It's a well-known fact that the best hitters are able to pick up the subtle rotation of the baseball as it leaves the pitcher's hand, giving them an idea of what type of pitch is headed their way. As no baseball game has yet managed to recreate the 3D depth perception, EA came up with the idea of color-coding different types of pitches. Fastballs are white, breaking pitches are red, off-speed pitches are green, sinking pitches are purple, and just to really aggravate you, the knuckleball is orange.

There are different breakdowns within each pitch, though, which means that hitting the ball is more difficult than just watching the pitch color and sitting on it. There are three different types of fastball, for example: a 4-seamer, a 2-seamer, and Mariano Rivera's bread and butter, the cutter.

There are at least three different off-speed pitches: a change-up, a circle change, and a palmball. Believe me when I say you haven't known aggravation as a hitter until you've faced a pitcher in MVP who sports a palmball, a knuckleball, a decent fastball, and possibly a curve for good measure.

Now, along with the ability to recognize a pitch as it leaves the pitcher's hand, there's one other advantage savvy hitters have long enjoyed - the ability to pick up on the fact that the opposing hurler may be "tipping" his pitches; that is, he may hold his glove a certain way for certain pitches, or he may give other subconscious signals that a smart hitter can learn to recognize. To that end, better pitchers are more able to disguise the ball before they throw it in MVP, whereas lesser pitchers will give you a glimpse of the ball color before they release it, giving you a better opportunity to hit the ball. It's a wonderfully subtle mechanism, and it just enhances the Hitter's Eye effect.

Hitting the ball is largely a timing-based mechanism. You can just hit the button at the appropriate time to try and hit the ball, although you'll have very little influence over the results if you do so.

If you want to get into the showdown a little more, you have two tools at your disposal: the left thumbstick, and the black button. For the first time in who-knows-how-long, you have the ability to adjust your stance, closing it to go the opposite way, or opening it to pull the ball.

Combine that with the use of the thumbstick to direct what type of ball you'd like to hit - grounder versus fly ball, pull versus opposite way or spray - and you've got perhaps the most control as a hitter that console baseball has ever seen. Getting the hang of that kind of control takes time, and patience, though. You will get frustrated early, so make use of the hitting mini-game. That's what it's there for.

One other interesting little feature: right-clicking on the thumbstick will show you a breakdown of not only the location of the pitches, but if you glance to the right of the little strike zone, you'll see a pitch-by-pitch breakdown of specifially what pitch was thrown. Pulling on either trigger will reveal the same information for previous plate appearances in the game. It's easy to miss, but that information can be enormously valuable to solving difficult pitchers.

On the mound, however, you'll find that very little is different from past years. You still aim your pitch, you still press A/X/B/Y/black to select your pitch, holding it down for "stuff," and tapping it when it's in the green for control. The big change this time around is the addition of a 'quick' pickoff move. You still have the old exaggerated-toss-over that pitchers use to keep runners honest, but you also have the lightning-quick pickoff move that pitchers will use to get batters out. It works on the same principle as the normal fielder throw meter, though, so be careful - if the throw goes into the red, you may throw it away.

Fielding, on the other hand, has a big addition of its own - the Big Play Stick. Pushing up on the right thumbstick will result in a jump for the ball, which is handy when trying to steal homers, pushing to the sides will result will result in your fielder diving or stretching for the ball, and pulling down will result in a slide.

To throw to any of the bases, press the corresponding face button (think of the buttons as the base layout), or press the black button to hit your cutoff man. Like the pitching meter, the longer you press the button, the harder the player will throw. The critical difference here, however, is the presence of an "error zone." If you release the button in the red, your player will be more likely to throw the ball away.

There is a wonderfully subtle way to reduce such errors, however: allow your players to set their footing before you throw the ball. If you try to throw while the player is moving, it will result in an off-balance throw that greatly increases the chance of an error happening while the meter is in the red, but if you give him a second or two to stop first, you can usually throw it in the red with few problems, allowing you to nail those faster runners at their destination.

Unfortunately, there's one little problem with the fielding that has caused me to largely stick to "assisted" fielding: the computer has an annoying tendency to switch to completely random fielders without your approval, turning a sure out into a double, triple, or worse, an in-the-park homer. Nothing is more more aggravating than a bases-situation in the 9th of a one-run game that ends when a routine fly to right, induced by your closer, turns into a game-winning double because the fielder icon switches to your left fielder, and your right fielder moves into a "cover" position.

Those are just the main gameplay elements, now. There are a variety of added, minor features that do a fantastic job of adding to the realism. For years, I've longed for a game that could handle rainouts, and for years, I've been disappointed. MVP 2005 changes that, although the rainouts are rare. Even better, on those rare occasions when they do happen, the game is evidently able to schedule doubleheaders to make up the lost day, which is another feature I've longed for.

"Blown calls" by the umpires have also been a feature for a couple of seasons, but in the past, you haven't been able to do much about them. Baseball, you see, lacks instant replay, which is part of what makes the same feature in Madden so compelling: if the referee screws it up, you can toss the red flag.

To that end, also appearing for the first time is the ability to argue calls with the umpires. Arguing balls and strikes is an immediate ejection, of course, which means that you lose the ability to make roster moves, such as pinch hitting, pinch running, and relief appearances. You can still control the players, just not the managerial decisions.

If you'd rather not argue balls and strikes, you can argue close plays at the bases. Think the fielder got pulled off the bag? Go out and argue your case by tapping the "Y" button repeatedly before the next at-bat. An "Argument intensity" meter appears when you do so, and the faster you tap, the higher the meter rises, and the more intense the argument gets (which is great fun). You can still be ejected for these arguments - and the more intense the argument, the more likely that particular outcome - but they can also have an added effect: they can influence player morale.

A well-timed argument, even one that results in ejection, can cause an increase in player performance, sort of a "he's got our back!" effect. A poorly-timed argument, however, can be sort of a downer in the clubhouse, resulting in a decrease in performance.

For those of you having trouble adjusting to the MVP batting system, and particularly the Hitter's Eye, you have the pitching and hitting mini-games making their debut, and I give you fair warning: it's entirely possible to get so sucked into these that you forget about the rest of the game.

The hitting mini-game starts you off against a pitcher throwing batting practice (i.e., 70% effectiveness). You get 10 pitches to rack up as many points as you can, and you're given different goals with each pitch. The game may ask you to just hit the ball to a given field, or it may get more specific and ask for a flyball, a grounder, or something straight down the line. The points are awarded on a one-to-one basis: one foot of distance equals one point.

Successfully meeting that goal results in a points bonus, depending on just how successful you were. Completely failing to accomplish the objective results in a points penalty, and fouling a pitch off doesn't give you anything, which can be good or bad depending on what you would have gotten. It also counts as a pitch against you, which is always bad.

There are also various obstacles on the field, both good and bad. Wooden cutouts of the infielders can stop a scorching liner, resulting in fewer points than you might otherwise have had. This is bad. Hitting the ball in the indicated direction gives you access to lit-up ramps, which will greatly increase your distance if you hit them. This is good. Hitting a darkened ramp is sort of neutral, in that you still get distance points, but the ramp slows down your ball's progress.

Hitting a vehicle, either the cars and buses beyond the outfield fences, or the moving lawnmowers, will result in point bonuses. Hitting the moving lawnmowers is good for a +1000 bonus, and that has saved my bacon more than once after hitting a ball that would otherwise have yielded me negative points, such as when hitting a vortex.

Hitting a vortex, you say? Is that bad? Yeah...that's bad. The vortex is this big red and black circle that appears on the ground when the ball is in the air, and landing on it will bounce your ball backwards. The game is evil about this, because a ball you hit normally that avoids the vortex may not get the chance to come to a complete stop before you return to the plate, while a ball that hits a vortex WILL go as far as it can in assessing its penalty before you get another crack at it. Finally, you get a bonus for reaching the round's goal with pitches left over.

As you progress, the pitcher will increase the effectiveness of his pitches, up to 100%. The point totals necessary to advance will also increase, making it imperative that you avoid the vortices and otherwise rack up all the bonuses you can.

The pitching mini-game is decidedly simpler, on the other hand. The strike zone is composed of blocks of five different colors, each corresponding to one of the buttons used to throw a pitch. The idea is that you're trying to clear blocks of, well, blocks. You want as many blocks of one color touching each other as you can get, the better to rack up massive bonuses with. You also get increased points for rearing back and letting the pitch meter go deep into the red, and for landing perfectly on the green on the rebound.

The pitching mini-game is available in two flavors: timed, and untimed. The timed mini-game is just what it sounds like. You have a countdown timer, and you use that time to try and reach various point totals by knocking out those blocks. There are five checkpoints along the way, and reaching each checkpoint will add 30 seconds to your clock.

It's also entirely possible that, in the process of wiping out masses of color, you'll find yourself with several single-block patches of color, which are useless from a combo perspective. If you find yourself in this boat, you can pull the left trigger to scramble the pattern (and usually get some new color masses), but that knocks 5 seconds off the timer. Fair warning.

The untimed game works on the same principle, but gives you the 10 pitch limit found in the batting mini-game. You have 10 pitches to reach the full point requirement, with no checkpoints along the way. If you don't get there, it's game over.

The best strategy I've found so far is to identify a color whose blocks are grouped tightly together, and start picking away at any blocks that are separating the identified color from reaching critical mass. In the untimed mini-game, I usually spend 9 pitches doing that, and then unleash the 10th pitch on my newly created mass of color, a tactic that's usually good for automatic advancement to the next round.

That strategy may work in the timed minigame as well, but the fact that you're racing against the clock means that to pull that off, you'll need hair-trigger decision-making reflexes.

As addictive as these mini-games are in their own right, they've also been integrated into Owner and Franchise Modes as a way to improve your major (and/or minor leaguers). Failure to meet a certain standard can cost your player skill points, however, so it's best to be certain that you can hack it in the mini-games before taking on such a task (the mini-games are optional in Spring Training).

Still, a successful result can be positively lethal, particularly for pitchers. As I mentioned, the colors of the pitching mini-game correspond to the buttons used to throw pitches, but as you play the game, you'll notice that not every pitcher has five pitches in his arsenal. I've noticed that the pitching mini-game gives three-pitch hurlers a fourth pitch (presumably so as not to put them too far behind the 8-ball), but pitchers sporting a full arsenal will naturally have an easier time progressing through the ranks, and, thusly, an easier time reaching elite pitcher status. Eric Gagne, for example, gained himself a +4 bonus to his control for all five of his pitches during spring training, a bonus that's absolutely sick when you realize how good he is to begin with.

On top of all of that, you have the elephant in the living room, the feature that’s there but that you don’t really talk about because you expect it to be there: Xbox Live functionality. I won’t say much about it because it’s pretty standard, but I do have two minor gripes with it:

1) How cool would it have been to be able to play seasons online with your buddies?
2) Why are ranked games only 5 innings long? This encourages the sort of “rank inflation” that we saw in, say, ESPN NHL 2k4, where people would play really short ranked games in order to rack up massive win totals and climb to the top of the leaderboards that way. Poor form, I say.

Graphically, MVP 2005 is gorgeous. The stadia are gorgeous, naturally, and in Owner Mode, the crowds are reflective of the attendance for your game, which allows you to get a feel for the success of your marketing tactics. The animations, with a couple of minor flaws – players rebounding off walls like tennis balls off rackets, say – are gorgeous, with some incredibly subtle effects, such as fielders setting their feet for balance before a throw.

The audio, on the other hand, is largely atrocious. I won’t spend much time here, because it doesn’t really deserve it, but let me see if I can sum up: the announcing crew can’t hold MLB 2006’s jock in this department, although the crowd ambience is fantastic. The announcing is trite, banal, and shallow, and I should probably stop there. Either turn the volume down, or mute the announcers in the game options. Your ears will thank you.

I’ve spent better than 8 pages talking about all the ways that MVP 2005 rocks (and a couple where it doesn’t), but what it boils down to is that they fixed the major flaws from last year’s game: lefty power, and minor league development. Everything else is merely icing on the cake, but what a cake it is. If you’ve been craving baseball the way I have since the Red Sox swept the Cardinals, pick this one up. At just $29.99, it might be the best fix for a craving you’ll ever find.