The Pastime

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Arizona enjoying the heavenly combination of spring training baseball and Phoenix March weather, I received an email from a marketing representative of Sony. Would I like to review MLB 08: The Show? Of course I would.

Just one problem, though. I didn’t own a Playstation 2, PSP, or PS3…

I had to call in help from my buddy Shawn, who does, in fact, own a PS3.

When I got back from my sunny, baseball-filled excursion in Arizona, I found a package waiting for me on my still snow-covered porch in Nebraska. Inside was not one, but several copies of the aforementioned game. It was time to get down to reviewing.

(Details on how you can get your hands on a copy, for free, later on in my review.)

Shawn and I cracked open the game that night and started exploring the features. We played for a couple hours, and I’ve got some first impressions to share. I’ll have more later, after I have a chance to play a little deeper into the game.

— — —

First, to the highlights of MLB 08: The Show.

— The game is beautiful. While it’s not a substitute for real life televised baseball after a long winter, it’s sure close. There’s an old acid test about walking into a room while the video game is on, and not immediately being able to tell if it’s real or a game. I was sitting down, playing the game, and there were times where I’d find myself almost wondering about the reality of what I was seeing on TV. Just great, great work on the part of Sony’s animators and designers. Well done.

— The ballparks are incredibly detailed and complete — they even have little cameramen in centerfield. The crowd doesn’t act like synchronized zombies, and little details stand out. For instance, a few dozen people in a section will stand up and try for a foul ball hit to them.

— The animation is very, very realistic. I wonder if Sony didn’t use motion capture for thousands of individual events like batting, pitching and fielding. Turning a double play looks just as graceful as the real thing. Eric Byrnes dives with just as much insanity as he does in real life. Bobby Crosby flails at outside sliders in the game with just as much hopelessness as he does hundreds of times a season. Tim Lincecum’s pitching motion is exactly as strange in the game as it is on the mound in San Francisco.

— Past the visual success, the gameplay is fun, and just the right amount of challenging. Well, at least it is so far. I played on the “veteran” setting, the second-easiest of the four difficulty levels. The pitching meter is pretty much the same as always, and location in the strike zone is handy with the left analog stick. Getting timing down on hitting isn’t hard, but getting a hit seems to be as difficult as it is in real life.

— We played several games, and the stats weren’t “video-game” at all — very realistic. Three to seven runs and about ten hits were the average, and pitchers didn’t end up striking out 18 or 20 batters. No one wants to play a game that’s that far off of reality, do they? Sony is all about this game being “the closest experience possible next to actually playing in the Majors,” and they’re not exaggerating that much. It’s not like playing baseball at all, but it’s very much like watching a game on TV — but with a lot more input than just yelling at the televised manager to pull the pitcher already.

I didn’t get a chance to try out the very cool-looking career mode, where you make a player and guide him through the minors — but I think it looks very promising. It’s like the career mode in Madden where you can guide a player, and you only play in that role. It’s interesting to see a game from only one player’s perspective, and I look forward to playing it more.

— — —

Now, onto the couple criticisms I have of the game so far…

— First, the load times are quite long. I understand that I’m playing a game in high-def, and that it’s a Playstation game — long load times are common. However, they seem especially lengthy on MLB 08: The Show. I used to play the Triple Play and MVP games back in the days of the original Playstation, so I’m familiar with the long pre-game load time, but I really thought that Sony would be able to better take advantage of the PS3 architecture. Madden 08, a comparable game made by EA, has much shorter load times. Curious.

— I was also disappointed to see that there are no extra mini-games like Home Run Derby, hitting practice or pitching practice. These were a staple of EA’s previous MLB game franchise, the MVP series, but are noticeably absent from The Show. Sometimes you don’t want to sit down with your buddies and play a full nine-inning game — that’s where Home Run Derby used to come in handy.

The game has a pretty low learning curve for those who just want to pick up a controller and play, but it’s definitely geared toward the realistic simulation crowd. Honestly, that’s what I’m looking for in a baseball game, but it might not be what everyone wants. There are no flames, no exploding home runs, and no unrealistically huge sluggers. There are other games that fill that niche, but the ultra-realistic simulator market is extremely well-filled by the MLB: The Show series.

Now, I’m sure some of you might be thinking to yourselves, “well, this guy is probably just giving the game a good review because Sony sent him a copy for free.” I won’t argue that that’s good logic, but I can tell you this: I honestly, genuinely like this game. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have taken the time to write the previous thousand words singing its praises.

In a couple weeks, after I’ve had some time to check out the rest of the features, I’ll be back with the second part of this review. I’m looking forward to testing out the career mode — my buddy Shawn has played with it for a couple days, and he’s only had good things to tell me so far.

— — —

And now, to the part you’ve all been waiting for — how to get a copy for the low, low price of zero dollars. Just be the first to answer the question below, by Sunday, April 13th.

This year’s cover model for MLB 08: The Show, Ryan Howard, has never faced the A’s — since he’s in the National League, is relatively young, and wasn’t with the team when they last played Oakland in inter-league play. He has, however, faced three pitchers that now play for the A’s. He’s hit a home run off of one of them. Three parts are necessary to get this one right. One, what are the three pitchers Howard has faced that are now on the A’s staff, which one gave up the homer, and who was on base when Howard hit his home run?

Submit your answer in the comments, and I’ll judge who submits the correct answer and mail them a copy of the game. First correct one wins.

(Hint: the easiest way to find the answer is through Baseball-Reference’s wonderful Play Index.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Video Game Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.