The minority of the game that uses the Wii to anything resembling its potential is ironically named “Power Pros via Wii Remote” which, as you’ll recall, only includes two of the many options available in this title. Worse still is the manner in which the system utilizes the Wii remote. Swinging the bat consists of swinging the remote in any direction, in any manner, as long as it’s at the right moment to strike the ball. As long as the sensor is pointing at the Wii you could spank the remote like a cranky toddler and it would still register it as a full swing.

Pitching isn’t anymore robust than batting. Swinging in a direction will give the ball somewhat of an arc in that direction, but there was never a moment where it seemed to matter. On normal I was able to win several games pitching with nothing more than a random wrist flinch while read a magazine. The entire remainder of Wii related motion fun involves running to catch the ball and running to the bases, both are accomplished by shaking the remote back and forth to speed up the players while the AI does everything else.

Now, if we plug the nunchuk in (or use a Wii gampad or Gamecube controller) we can play the rest of the game. Much of the usual baseball fodder is included: League play, seasons, practice, and MLB Life. Respectively: Play baseball, play a lot of baseball, practice baseball, and BE baseball. You can make your own team, and if you feel like it you can employ your Nintendo Mii’s to join in on the experience.

The major problem with all of these styles of play is that they are for the hardcore enthusiast. Everyone else will find the controls frustrating and hard to get used to, let alone master. Gameplay goes from “lobotomized” in Wii Remote mode to “barely worth the effort” when played otherwise.

Let’s break it down to brass tacks. Wii fans will be disappointed, obviously, but enthusiasts are in for an entirely different scenario. If you love baseball enough to enjoy a game that features all the teams, with all the players, with all the jerseys, in all the stadiums then I promise that you own no less than three and no more than eight baseball titles that include all of these options and are done better than MLB Power Pros 2008. The cuteness of the art wears off eventually and doesn’t really have that Mii charm anyway. The music is irritating, repetitive, and as far as I could tell you couldn’t turn it off. The announcer’s dialogue is broken up and mechanical so that it sounds like Christopher Walken doing a William Shatner impression while he was employed as the Moviefone guy.

All-in-all I’d say it’s a “swing and a miss” for MLB Power Pros 2008, if by that I mean that they swung, missed, lost their grip on the bat and killed a spectator.