Major League Baseball 2K8: Fantasy All-Stars

Misses the mark as a major league player, but works well as an arcade offshoot. Fun, partially innovative, and a good way to kill short waiting periods.

While there’s plenty we’d like to see fleshed out (especially the skimpy single-player modes and badly out-of-date rosters), it’s a more-than-welcome effort that does right by the DS platform.

While this won't replace MLB 08: The Show -- the best portable hardcore baseball game out there -- it's tailored for tots and casual seamheads on the go.

Outside of tournaments and multiplayer, the game doesn't have a mode that you can sink your cleats--or time--into. [June 2008, p.101]

A decent design on paper, but it simply doesn’t translate. Touch control for batting and pitching are annoying, rather than intuitive, the design embraces a style, but lacks polish and refinement on it, and the list of options and modes don’t really push the experience beyond a few hours.

Overall, while it's nice to see someone try to make a baseball game that's a little different from the norm, it still needs to be user friendly and easy to play; instead it's an extremely frustrating game for lefties and a barely passable game for right handed players and is best saved for the younger crowd as a rental.

An absolute sham of a game, full of broken mechanics and proof that when you carry a gimmick too far, you end up with something that no one wants to play.