Review Home / ConsoleSports Game Reviews

The Positives: Many- deep simulation, incredible presentation, awesome voice team, slick graphics, tons of animations- and the fact that, at least on the PS2,there's now a baseball game good enough to make us forget about the loss of EA's MVP series.

The Negatives: Deep player editor...but names can't be changed? and you can't just pick up and play a minor league game without starting a franchise. No online franchise play.

Review:
I was expecting to be seriously bummed-out this spring because of no pro version of EA's fine MVP baseball product. However, a funny thing happened on my way to "No More MLB MVP Baseball Depression"... because SCEA Sports came along and trumped it anyway. MLB 06 The Show is the most refined baseball sim I've ever played. Oddly enough, about the only big negative about the product would be the sore feelings of the people who ditched their PS2 before the release of this game must be feeling. Yes folks, this game is that good.

So why does this game play so well? The easy answer is that it seems like SCEA knew what to borrow from both MVP and 2K Baseball. They used what worked and worked well. However, SCEA didn't stop there. They took many of those concepts and refined them to seemlessly integrate into their game, and then they improved on those concepts in many areas. To be fair, last year's Sony MLB game was a good baseball game, and it really showed that SCEA was in the process of perfecting a baseball engine. However, last year's product was still kind of raw. You could "see the seams" in the animations and it had a few bugs along the way. This year, SCEA really came out of the gate fixing graphics, refining sounds, improving playability, and making the game deep.

Gameplay:
Volumes could be written on the depth and options this game has, but instead I'll focus on how it differs and refines the type of baseball game we know and love. For instance there's the battle between pitcher and hitter. SCEA has been doing the "guess pitch" interface for two years now, and I happen to like it. You can guess which type of pitch you think the pitcher will throw, such as the heater, slider, etc.. If you guess right, your batter's interface will "flash" for a split second at the end of the pitcher's windup. Keep in mind, this "flash" does not show you the location of the pitch, just the "type" that you guessed correctly. You can also try to guess location too. This is done by moving the stick into one of the 9 areas of the strikezone where the pitch might arrive. If you guess that correctly, you get a pitch location icon during the pitcher's release to show you exactly where the ball will arrive. Once in a while, you guess both "guessing interfaces" correctly and get keyed into both type of pitch and location of pitch. Logically, that usually equates to a base-hit or a tater. This is much easier said than done though, and I can honestly say I only average a correct "double-guess" a little less than once per game. This is probably because the AI pitchers are so effective at mixing up both location and pitch type. However, if you play a human component who likes to come with low-inside heat all day, you can really victimize him for his lack of variety by picking up on that tendency.

Other refinements are in the area of pitching itself. One of my main gripes about both the MVP series and the 2K baseball series is that you have so much unrealistic pitch control. Quite often, you'd have pinpoint accuracy. Rarely would you accidentally throw a ball when you meant to throw a strike, and painting the corners- even in late innings- was unbelieveably easy. Of course, in the game of baseball, this isn't the case. MLB 06 The Show solves this problem with release-point pitching. For one thing, your pitch location target icon shows the area of the batting zone you are throwing to as if on a straight-line (think: fastball). The cursur does not compensate for "break on the ball" at all. At first, this is troublesome for an old MVP hound like myself who's used to placing that target exactly where the ball will cross the plate. At first, its hard- because I fell into old habits. After a few innings I was compensating for "break" in my mind. My inside sliders where I painted the corner were hitting battlers or sometimes going behind them! Soon I realized that I should aim for the middle of the plate with the icon, and then the break on the pitch would send the ball towards the corner naturally- provided I did the pitch meter within the accuracy tolerances (which is almost identical to MVP).

I also must say that I'm impressed with the AI pitchers. We finally have a game where they throw a realistic amount of outside the strikezone balls. On a related note, umpires make some questionable calls near the edges of the strikezone. They aren't "cheap" per-se, but they will make bad calls against both you and the AI. You tend to celebrate on a gift strikeout that your pitcher gets for that rare ball 2 inches outside the strikezone. Conversely, later in the game you may want to scream an obscenity when a similar strike is called against one of your batters. In a word: Realistic.

The rest of the game is spot-on baseball, with the deep strategy and options you'd expect from your days with MVP. Various types of slides, pre-loading throws, dives, alignments- you name it.

Graphics:
MLB 06 the Show may be accused of borrowing much from MVP Baseball, but one thing is for sure- SCEA sports did not settle for EA's aging graphics. The players look REAL good. Sony's face scan technology IMHO is the best facial scanning technology that any developer has. The players look good, the stadiums look great, its all there. Where this game really shines is the animations you just don't expect. The players mill around in the dugout, they interact with one another during plays, they celebrate together, they basically move like human beings and not video game equivalents to mannequins. Honestly, no developer has ever made the players seem as "alive" as they do in this game.

Sound:
2K sports is known for their broadcast quality presentation. Well folks, say hello to the new king... at least with just baseball. Incredibly detailed sound work was turned in by of Padres TV announcer Matt Vasgersian, longtime Fox and ESPN analyst Dave Campbell, and Angels TV color man Rex Hudler. They give great commentary and, what impresses me the most, great insite about your individual players' last few at bats. The announcers seem to "remember things" from previous innings, and will even talk about their impact later in the game. I've never seen that before. Good job Sony... this is the best voicework I've ever heard in a game.

Depth:
There's really nothing it doesn't have, yet it has even more you don't expect. Career Mode, Franchise Mode, and two arecadish modes (King of the Diamond and Home Run Derby). Franchise mode is particularly in-depth, and you handle the management of your team completely. Players and coaches will even come to you with gripes that you can opt to try to fix or opt to do nothing about. (Well, you can make things worse, help, or let things simmer and see what happens, but your involvement is up to you.) You can also opt to let the AI handle things as well. Simply put, its all there- and more. There's complete Spring Training to try to build your players attributes, positional coaches who discuss player needs with you. Basically, you have every nuance of baseball strategy at your fingertips.

...and (drumroll) you also have the AA and AAA minor leagues in franchise mode. This has been something EA did well, and 2K still continues to not even include. Kudos to SCEA for giving us the minor leagues in franchise mode. That's the way it should be.

Online:
SCEA has really revamped their online interface, ticker, news, etc. It looks good, and they added instant messaging. Online play consists of quick head-to head, rivalry mode against a buddy, and user created tournaments. The usual accompanyment of ladders, leaderboards etc. make their way back too. I also have to say that SCEA's online rosters have been pretty good, and its a good thing too, because the roster editor is the only thing in this game that isn't top quality.

Negatives:
I'll be honest with you- this is the greatest baseball game I've ever played. Its hard to find gripes. However, I do have one- and its an important one. The roster editor sucks. From what I've found from expirementation, you cannot edit names. Period. What is strange is that you can edit damn near everything else... but not the player names. You cannot go in and change the name of the generic player who's in there in place of Barry BALCO. You just can't... at least not from what I've found. You can't change anybody else's name either. Not that huge of a gripe, right? Well, the problem then becomes in your franchise, mostly all of your AA and AAA players have fake names (unless they have had actual MLB experience and been on a roster before). So most of the names are fake, and none of them can be changed. This is the only area where I feel Sony dropped the ball for the hardcore players. Perhaps someone will have a roster file hack, and I wouldn't doubt its already in progress. Hopefully, in future sports games, Sony takes a cue from of their competitor's roster editors. Also- and this is a very mild gripe- no online franchises, just online stat tracking for you and a buddy (called Online Rivalry Mode). Lots of people don't have online franchise play, but lets hope it becomes more standard in the future for all sports games. Of course, only the hardcores would be willing to play every game of an online 180+ game season and spring training, but I'm sure they are out there.

All that said, this is a brilliant game, and a must-buy for any PS2 owner. Sony hit one out of the park with this unexpected late-current-gen bit of near-perfection. Without a doubt, this is the best sports game I've ever had the opportunity to review.

There are currently no user submitted comments.

Powered by Simple Review