Infield Homer
MLB finally arrives on the PS3, but how did the jump treat what many call the best baseball game ever made?
Published: May 15, 2007
That goes triple for really digging into the Francise Mode, which is so insanely deep and complicated that I never made it through even a single season (partly because I didn't feel like simulating 160-some games). Having as much or as little control over everything about a team is, frankly, the kind of stuff I know some people geek out on, and while I can appreciate the fact that Sony Computer Entertainment America's San Diego Studios were wise enough to allow the computer to all but control any and all aspects of budgets, players, trading, morale, stadium maintenance and so on, it was still a bit too unwieldy for me.
One of the disadvantages of not knowing the sport (or the games for that matter) intimately is that I'll probably never really pick up on the more nuanced parts of the game. I can, however, fairly confidently state that I've got no friggin' clue where the extra month and a half of extra development time went on the PS3 version. It's not that it looks bad (in fact, the game runs at a rock solid framerate), it's just that visually, it's got nothing on 2K Sports' baseball effort. You'll see some basic (if rather impressive) normal mapping on the players, allowing their uniforms to crease and fold realistically, but the detail in the models and the overall texture resolution just isn't something that feels made for next-gen. Instead, even with what are apparently thousands of new animations in the PS3 version, it still feels like an up-ressed PS2 game.
Fortunately, what was in the PS2 game was already mightily impressive. The sheer amount of motion capture data that went into the game means that the players really do move as if they're alive. You'll see trademark batting and pitching stances and animations (and of course you can give your created player Ken Griffey Jr.'s bat wobble and Randy Johnson's southpaw flick if you'd like), but really it's all in the little side bits, the little things where the players get their personality.
By far, though, the shining gem of the game's presentation is the audio. A thick, soupy wall of ambience with vendors barking out offers and jeers from the crowd are here, of course, but it's in the commentary, which is absolutely phenomenally natural and branches so seamlessly that I actually played games just to hear them being talked through. Yes, you'll hear repetition, just like you always will in a sports game, but things like hearing basic factoids being spat out during the starting lineup run-down and little one-off notes about someone coming to bat, how they've done earlier in the game or even how they did in the season are just mind-bogglingly well done. Huge kudos to the audio team -- particularly because they had my last name pre-recorded in the hundreds of pages of options you could link to your created player.
In a way, I'm almost glad I don't play most sports games. I had no idea that it was even possible to get hooked by a game like this -- and baseball of all sports, easily the one sporting event that you can't drag me out to see with the promise of food and beer. I'll watch curling before I watch a baseball game. Even with my hatred of the real-life game, SCEA managed to craft for themselves a virtual version that actually managed to get its claws into me. That's something no other baseball game can lay claim to, and for that, the boys and girls down in San Diego should be very proud indeed.
That said, I'm not so blind as to have missed that some of the modes from the PS2/PSP versions of the game aren't here, nor did the fact that the game really just doesn't feel next-gen in the least (though it's a very pretty high-res PS2 game) pass me by. Maybe it's just because MLB '07: The Show on the PS2 is so accomplished. Maybe it's because this was never meant to be anything more than a stopgap until a proper PS3 game can be created. Whatever the reason, the game's visuals aren't going to sell PS3s, but there's no denying the gameplay is good enough to bait in even us non-fans.
