Ah, baseball. The only sport where you can eat a hot dog, sit on your butt for three hours, and call it exercise. MLB 2005 for the PlayStation takes this exhilarating pastime of waiting for something to happen and crams it into a video game—a feat that somehow sounds both incredible and perilous.
MLB 2005 attempts to bring the crack of a bat and the smell of spilled nachos right to your living room without the actual smell of spilled nachos. Gameplay is serviceable, just like your diet. You can either load up on arcade-style fun or dive deep into the more simulator aspects of the game. The controls are the usual fare: a few buttons to hit, a few to throw, and a couple that seem to do nothing at all. If you connect for a big hit, you might even feel like a baseball prodigy. Alternatively, if you swing and miss, you're just at home playing MLB: Strikes Out of the Park, where home runs are as elusive as your motivation to get up before noon on a Saturday. Franchise mode is like running a family—lots of decisions, a lot of time spent worrying, and a gradual descent into madness. You can trade players like they’re Pokémon cards, but be prepared to unleash the wrath of virtual fans when you do so. You can also customize your team—a process only slightly less complicated than explaining why you still live in your parents’ basement. Management decisions, while often yielding zero consequences in real life, take a slightly amusing turn here as you are mostly left to your own devices.
When it comes to visuals, MLB 2005 is essentially creating a time capsule back to a simpler time where major graphical advancements were a dream for the future. The players look like they went through a particularly rough polygonal adolescence, but they somewhat resemble their real-life counterparts—that is, if their real-life selves got into a terrible fight with a dumpster. The ballparks do mimic their real-world versions well enough that you can convince yourself that you are actually sitting in a stadium—if you squint hard enough. Just remember, the graphics were not created to uphold the fidelity we have come to expect in more recent games. Instead, they serve as a bittersweet reminder that even the joys of baseball can’t always be pretty. Combine that with the ever-so-charming commentary from the late, great Vin Scully, and you almost forget how awkward the players look... almost.
MLB 2005 serves its purpose as a nostalgic baseball experience tucked away in the annals of PlayStation history. It balances the fine line between being entertaining and utterly frustrating, often leaning into both extremes. For the casual player, it’s a great way to kill time and perhaps discover baseball in a way that doesn’t involve a stranger explaining the infield fly rule. For die-hard fans, it’s a bit like visiting a long-lost cousin—you’re glad to see it, but you’re also not sure how much you actually miss it. So, while it may not hit a home run with the younger gamers today, it provides a decent experience for those willing to step into the past. Just make sure to keep some nachos handy—you might need them.
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