But does the damn thing work?

Like a moth to a flame, people are getting excited about the newest offering from 2K Sports as baseball season approaches.

Apparently gamers are just gluttons for punishment with short memories - regardless of whether or not they're also Cubs fans.

Gamespot has the breakdown between MLB 2K9 and MLB 09: The Show (the PS3 offering that continually ranks higher than the 2K9 version). It's worth mentioning that because of the respective contracts involved, 2K owns the rights to produce games for every platform with their MLB license, while The Show is only available for Sony platforms.

Here are last year's posts when I initially picked up MLB 2K8 and proceeded to get increasingly pissed off as the game remained a trash heap of bugs, the forums descended into chaos and rumors and name-calling.

I guess that's why I'm concerned to see new features and graphics being pimped as the reason to buy this year's attempt at a video game. While I can certainly understand a company's reluctance to promote a product on the basis of, "We suck less this year!" I'd really appreciate an acknowledgment of customer concerns that have carried over from year to year.

Features are great, the card system was fun when it worked and I did legitimately enjoy the new pitching interface they unveiled last year. However, when I put the game away for good, it wasn't because there weren't enough bells and whistles, it was when the game crashed for the third or fourth time in a month.

Fix pesky little details like that and I'll consider forking over another $60 this year.

(Image from: Gamespot.com)