The problem with baseball games is that they can be nearly as stoic and serious-minded as the real sport itself. Although games like Sony's MLB: The Show and 2K's MLB 2K series do a good (and sometimes great) job of re-creating America's pastime, they can get so mired in staying true to the sport that some of the fun of being a video game gets leached away in the process. Enter another 2K baseball series: MLB Power Pros. Developed out of the engine of the popular Japanese Jikkyo Powerful Pro Yakyu baseball series from Konami, the game came stateside last year with MLB Power Pros. Last week, we got a chance to see the sequel, MLB Power Pros 2008, which is coming to the PlayStation 2, Wii and, later this year, the Nintendo DS.

If you played last year's game, you'll be right at home on the PS2 and Wii versions of Power Pros 2008. The pitching and batting interfaces are similar to last year's versions. When pitching, you'll choose your pitch type by pressing the analog stick in any direction, aim your pitch with the analog stick, and let your pitch loose with the X button. Batting still uses a cursor; you try to place your bat cursor over the ball cursor and then swing with the X button. You can also set your swing to a "power" swing by pressing the R1 button before your swing. Fielding still uses the face buttons as analogs for the bases themselves and running the bases is as easy as ever.

New additions to the controls in Power Pros 2008 include the bullpen, which is where you can warm up pitchers in the middle of a game, as well as the ability to move your defense players to adjust for a variety of different situations. These include bringing in the corners on a bunt or shifting your outfield to the left or right to accommodate for a player who always hits to one side or the other.

Despite the new additions, Power Pros 2008 is still easy to learn, resulting in a pick-up-and-play style that suits the simplistic nature of the game's visuals well. As with last year's game, that primitive look belies a tremendous amount of depth, both in the sheer obsessive nature of statistics the game tracks and the amount of detail found in other aspects of the game. For example, last year's game had Success mode, a role-playing-game-like story mode that had you create a character and take him through high school as he did his best to make it into the minor leagues. MLB Power Pros 2008 has not one but two RPG modes; the continuation of Success mode that has your created character making his way into the Double A minor leagues and a full separate mode known as MLB Life, where you can follow a created player's career through the big leagues..."

Read full Hands On HERE from Gamespot.

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