Those of you who know my life outside the Rangers site know that I work for a video game company. I work for a company that puts out third person shooters (recent vintage would be Prey, and we’ve done Max Payne, and going further back, Duke Nukem). Anyway, I’ve been playing video games for quite some time, going back to my first system, the Atari 2600 in 1977. I’ve played just about all of them since then, and if there’s one thing I do on a new console, it’s play baseball games. I can’t say I’ve played every single one, but I’ve played a great percentage. This past Christmas when I got a Playstation 3 from my company as a Christmas present, I immediately started looking into the situation regarding baseball games on this new console. I had played The Bigs on my Wii, and have been playing the 2K Baseball game on my Xbox console since it was called something else on Xbox 1.
The Playstation 3 console had the 2K game ported to it, but due to contracts, the only company who could make a PS3 specific game is Sony themselves. So I checked into the MLB 07 The Show game, and it had decent reviews, but from what I could gather was not the “killer app” baseball game for the console. Since this was mid December, the early remarks were out on the next iteration, MLB 08. They were looking pretty good, and since it was only for the PS3 (well, for the PS2 & PSP as well, but that’s not germane here), I thought it would be a lot better. Console specific games usually are, since they don’t have to worry about multiplatform issues, and can truly harness the power of a specific console. So I got excited about this release.
So we get to March, and the game hits the stores. I actually walked out of the store with a copy of MLB 08 the Show for the PS3, and MLB 2k8 for my Xbox 360. Brought them home, and fired ’em both up. I know the 2K series, having been with it for years, and the newest iteration of that game feels a lot like the same thing more or less. Oh, I know it’s not, but it FEELS that way having bought and played every version for about five or six straight years. Then I hit MLB 08 The Show, and I have to say it felt like a breath of fresh air. Let’s hit some “official” bullet points about The Show…
- MLB 08 The Show is the long running officially licensed baseball title available exclusively on all PlayStation platforms: PLAYSTATION 3, PlayStation 2 and the portable PSP.
- MLB 08 The Show is available exclusively for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable consoles.
- MLB 08 The Show is the best-selling and most realistic baseball simulation available.
- MLB 08 The Show for PlayStation delivers the closest experience possible next to actually playing in the Majors.
Most of that sounds like corporate selling stuff, but I will buy into the most realistic baseball simulation available. That is not corporate stuff. It’s quite true. MLB 08 The Show kicks MLB 2k8 in the head pretty darned well. 2K had some major frame rate issues (which were helped, but not solved) with a patch. The Show was quite fluid from game one, and has remained so. I do not have an HDTV (yet), but even in standard def, The Show’s graphics are way better. Also, something else I should point out. In this day when most games are gearing towards HDTV, they take very little care into how the game looks on SDTV’s. 2K has some text that is COMPLETELY unreadable on my TV set – it’s just too small. On an HDTV, that might not be a problem, but on my TV, it’s rendered useless. MLB 08 The Show has no such problem. All the screens are rendered beautifully, and are totally readable.
One of those “intangible” things is the “feel” of the game. It’s not something that I can pin down and say “OK, this menu does “X, and the other game does “Y” so I’m saying this game is better”. MLB 08 The Show’s menus just “feel” solid. Some games you look at the menus, and it looks pretty shoddily designed. Again, no such feeling here with The Show. The menus don’t feel like you’re going to break the game, they don’t chug, and they perform like you’d expect them to. Basically I don’t feel like I’m fighting the interface to find what I want here. I know most people don’t care about the feel of the menus, but I do – and this excels perfectly.
One other thing I tend to notice about a lot of baseball games is not a lot of care is taken in how the fonts and lettering on the back of uniforms look. A lot of games look well, WRONG. The Show has no such problem. Check out these couple of shots, and they look right to me. You can click on either of them to see a larger image.
It’s not just things like fonts on the player uniforms that look better. Ballparks, player models, umpires, everything just “looks” great. It’s hard to quantify it, and give you the words that will make you believe this, but if you play it, you’ll see it. Again, here’s a few screenshots to show you what I’m talking about.
That’s just graphics. The game play is solid, too. It took some getting used to the first few games I played, because I was so used to 2k’s way of doing things, but once I wrapped my head around it, I had no problems going forward from that point. Hard to talk at length about controllers – they either work, or they don’t – and this works. :)
The announcers I like a lot. The guys in the game are Rex Hudler, Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell. Dave Campbell was a guy I thought who was underused on Baseball Tonight, and Rex Hudler you know from the Angels. The other guy I admit to not knowing who he is, but that’s not a problem. Hudler is “Hud” in the game, too. Has some goofy comments – try swinging at a pitch that you have no hope of hitting, or throwing to a base where nobody is, and you get a good chance at a “Hudism” being thrown your way. The Show also suffers far less from repeat announcers. A problem a lot of games have is that once you play them a lot, you hear the same “bits” over and over again. I’ve heard some repeating here for sure, but nothing even close to being in the same ballpark (har har har) as some other games (yeah, I’m looking at you Joe Morgan in 2K).
Probably the most hyped feature of the game is “Road to the Show”. This is actually cooler than it sounds, provided you pick the right position. Basically you start this game by creating a player, and giving him specific abilities, you can customize just about everything about the player. One’s initial thought would be to create a roid raging freak-a-zoid, and have him called up to the Show after his second game in the minors, but you can’t just max out everything, you have a limited number of skill points you can distribute around, so it’s more fair in that regard. I created a few players, and played this way for awhile. It’s pretty cool, because your manager will berate you if you play like crap, and will bench you. You have to negotiate your contract in the offseason, and while I’ve never been outright released, I imagine that’s in there somewhere if you play like a complete moron. One other thing about this is that the mode is geared around a single player, and actual in game play reflects this. YOU ONLY PLAY ACTUAL PLAYS THAT INVOLVE YOUR PLAYER! This is important, because if you pick what’s regarded as a boring position (left field perhaps), not much happens. One time I picked first base, and 95% of my plays involve just running to first to have another player throw me the ball. That was really not very exciting, to be honest. If you are benched, the game might skip two or three games before you get called up as a pinch hitter. That’s another drag – if you are playing a RTTS game with a bench player, the game has to load all the graphics, and all the sounds you normally would to play a game, just for one at bat. You spend more time loading than you do playing in that scenario. Don’t get benched, you’ll spend a lot of time loading. That nit aside, it’s a very cool feature, and one of the stronger points of the game.
Some other minor things which are important is the ability to save in the middle of the game. For some reason, baseball games don’t let you do that, but you can here. There’s a really strong replay feature that is called “Replay Vault”, which lets you go back to any play in the game and check it out. There’s also customized personal music, really detailed stats on players, real life scores from MLB games in a ticker, MLB news, and the usual gameplay modes you see in baseball game (season, franchise, playoffs, etc). Franchise mode is where I spend most of my time, although RTTS was a really cool one that draws a lot of attention too. Anyway, Franchise has things like controlling player time, which you don’t often see in that mode.
Players generally look more like themselves than other games I’ve played. There’s also a boatload of personalized player moves, the umpires aren’t generic, and the coach names are the right ones, too. There are a TON of features that I don’t have time to get into here. I suggest checking out this Sony press release about the game – it goes into a lot more detail than I can here.
One other thing that I really like is the game has had weekly roster updates. It’s pretty darned thorough, so if you’re into having the current guys on your team, you’ll probably be into this, big time.
There is one thing I wanted to say that I feel MLB 2k8 is superior to The Show in. That’s a feature where you can collect and trade baseball cards. 2K has this thing where they have Topps baseball cards and you can collect them by achieving certain “objectives” with a player. You can also trade with others online, collect packs, and all that kind of stuff. I really REALLY liked that feature. In fact, if MLB 08 The Show had that feature, I would have NEVER played 2K’s game at all. MLB 08 The Show’s baseball game is far superior to 2k’s now, and if either 2K did not have the cards, or the Show did have the cards, I never would have played anything but the Show. Hey, if the Show designers ever read this, stick in the card thing. Guarantee you it would get used.
My review of the game is based on my experiences playing the Playstation 3 version. The game is also available for the Playstation 2. My guess is the game is the same, just the graphics (for obvious reasons) aren’t as strong. As for the PSP version, I have to image it’s mostly the same but with FAR less sophisticated graphics. I can’t speak to the PS2 & PSP versions, I have not played them.
If you have a Playstation 3, and never got the game, I strongly suggest buying it – it is by far my favorite baseball game right now. Below are some ordering links you can use to buy the game (click on the cover art). If you have one of these consoles, and like baseball games, I recommend it very highly. Back on April 11th, I asked about whether or not you had a PS3, and I gave away a few copies of the game back then, but I still have some left. If you have a Playstation 3, and have not played this game, please drop me a line. First two people to send me a PSN Friend request (to Joe3DR) will get it. Thanks. The remaining copies are spoken for.
Here are a few Youtube videos showing various aspects of the game. Check ’em out, they’re quite cool.
I wanted to apologize to Ayn over at BNC for taking so long in getting this done. I was originally supposed to do this back in March, but as time marched on, I got more embarrassed at how long it took me to do this. Sorry about that!
Awesome review, Joe.