In the eighth inning of a pivotal early-April "Major League Baseball 2K8" franchise game, Tigers pitcher Fernando Rodney's digital alter ego took a line drive to the face courtesy of a virtual Boston Red Sox slugger. Virtual Rodney went down. The virtual ball bounced into foul territory. The virtual Sox scored a run. My virtual Tigers gave up the lead. But goddamn if it wasn't the coolest thing I had ever seen in a baseball videogame. Unfortunately, I was soon notified that my setup man was out with a concussion, and I would ultimately find out that he was headed for the virtual DL, not unlike his real-life counterpart. Suddenly, the virtual ball-meets-skull incident wasn't so awesome. And that was more or less emblematic of my experience with "Major League Baseball 2K8" for the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. Certain aspects of the game are intriguing at face value, until you find yourself concussed two hours later.

As the only baseball simulation to be released on both the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 this year, "Major League Baseball 2K8" is charged with satisfying a lot of a fans. While the Wii version puts a premium on motion controls and interactivity, the 360 version is more detailed and visually pleasing. Unfortunately, neither version satisfies its intended purpose particularly well. The Wii's motion controls are limited and don't register manipulations of the Wii Remote in a 1:1 manner like baseball in "Wii Sports." And the 360 version introduces a few notable developments by utilizing the analog sticks for nearly everything. But wonky framerates, horrible load times and sterile in-game environments prevent it from being truly worthwhile.

Both games aren't a total wash though, as each version does a few things right. Neither title is perfect, but somewhere in the two games is one pretty decent game. Here's how the titles stack up.

Batting: If there's one thing the Wii version of "2K8" should have going for it, it's batting. "Wii Sports" - the Wii's glorified tech demo - hinted at the system's potential for pulling off a groundbreaking baseball sim by using 1:1 batting controls that would translate every movement of the Wii remote on screen. Sadly, it's been 16 months since "Wii Sports" was released and no one has come close to touching "Wii Sports" 's basic control scheme. Instead, swinging the Wii Remote in "2K8" is more-or-less the equivalent of tapping A on a GameCube controller. Swinging the remote merely activates a canned animation, and it doesn't feel like you have much control over what actually happens. Surprisingly, the 360's control scheme one-ups the Wii by utilizing a more predictable, analog-based scheme. Hitting in the 360 version involves drawing the right analog stick back right before the pitcher releases the ball and pushing it forward to swing. There's more potential in the Wii version, but the 360's more traditional mechanics are just better.

Pitching: Like SNES-era golf games, most baseball sims have stuck to a meter-based pitching system where players tap a button to stop and start a meter to throw the ball. The good news is both versions of "2K8" tossed the basic pitching meter aside. The bad news is both systems need work. In the Wii version, players use the Remote to point where they want the ball to go and flick their wrist forward to throw the ball when a pop-up meter enters an optimal zone. But the "throwing motion" - if you can really call it that - is basically no different from tapping a button and falls into the same trap that batting does on the system. Additionally, playing against another person is not really an option since whoever is batting can see exactly where the other person is pitching. The 360 version doesn't have this problem because the analog stick is always centered in the middle of the strike zone so it's possible to tell where you're pitching based on how far you move the analog stick. But since the Wii uses the Remote to point, it's necessary to see exactly where you're pitching. "2K8" for 360 introduced an analog-based pitching scheme where different pitches have different motions that are broken up into a windup and a follow-through. The 360 scheme works fairly well, but throwing each pitch is overly time consuming and pushes games past the 60 minute mark.