MLB 07: The Show
Reeeeally big sheeeoooowwww...
Published: December 13, 2006
The days of 989 Sports going toe-to-toe with EA Sports may have died off with the PS one days with games like the now-defunct GameDay, but there's one sport where Sony's internal sports studio has seriously stepped up: baseball. The MLB series has been on a tear over the past couple years, culminating in the stunningly good MLB 06: The Show. Apparently, SCEA's Sports Studio was just getting warmed up. The Show will indeed go on, buffed by a host of features so impressive that even we die-hard baseball poo-pooers couldn't help but get hooked -- and we only played it for about an hour.
It's hard to know where to start. Everything that made last year's game great, from the obsessively deep career and franchise modes with 40 player team management to stat tracking clearly done by programmers with OCD to a wealth of mini-games, tons of motion-captured data (including a branching animation system that lets you change a play on the fly while still keeping things nice and smooth) and one-off modes for just jumping into things right down to online play, minor league teams and hot and cold zones for batters and pitchers, all of this returns, which should make folks that bit on last year's game even more antsy for the 07 follow-up.
Perhaps it's just that, as an office full of guys that not only avoid sports games, but looooove to pick on them for offering little more than roster updates and tweaks that probably aren't needed, we couldn't help but love some of the risk/reward dynamics in the last game, and it's clear that the boys and girls down in San Diego understood this. They included elements of role-playing games (or at the very least strategy games), they deepened the online modes and they lengthened the single-player career modes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
Arguably the biggest addition is the one that also incorporates some of the little tweaks and improvements to the basic game. The new Road to The Show Mode lets you start out in the minors and work your way up to the MLB in a single position, playing both offense and defense (previously when playing defense you handled all of the fielding) and building your character with stat point increases earned by fulfilling position-specific goals during a game. You'll also have to manage requests from your coach during the season; sometimes this will come in the form of clutch game moments (a la the new NBA Replay feature in NBA 07 that will present you with certain moments from the season that you have a direct impact in changing.
It sounds like things are stripped down, given that you're only playing one position, and if you've picked an outfield spot, it's possible that you won't quite be in the mix, but if you pick a baseman -- or, more demandingly, a pitcher -- you'll often be called upon to quickly sub in on a position or a play. It really is a cool way of getting sucked into a game and it expands the defensive aspects far more. Of course, when you step up to the plate, you still have to combat hot and cold zones, and the same familiar (and, if we may say, kick ass) batting mechanics are in place. Should you need the advice, you can press a button to find out how true your timing and aim was for a base hit.
It's when you're on the mound that the game gets a little deeper this year. Thanks to a handful of factors that are almost always being tracked, you'll have to balance what pitches the catcher is calling for (dubbed Adaptive Pitching Intelligence and culled from tons of real-life MLB data) with pitches your pitcher is confident in using (the new Pitch Command System). It's not just as simple as painting the areas the pitcher calls for with the pitches he recommends, though; as you use specific pitches more and more, you'll gain confidence, but the others will fall.
It's that whole risk/reward thing we were talking about, and it makes every contest between mound and plate seem relevant. As a pitcher, you'll also have to worry about umpires, who now have their own personalities regarding how they call pitches. Given that the MLB series delights in complicating things with individual strike zones based on batter size, it's far more complicated than just sticking pitches inside the indicated strike zone, and feeling out an ump's calls becomes just as important as learning batters' strike zones.
Though this is very much a tertiary glance at the new stuff (and we're sure the die-hards will pick up on any little tweaks we just haven't noticed), there's still one major addition that's been added this year, and Sony is hoping it'll bolster the online play significantly. You can now organize your own leagues, allowing up to 30 players or as few as six, with tweaks to the length (6-182 games), pick a league commissioner, and distribute awards and penalties for just your league. League wins actually go onto your online scorecard, and commissioners have the option to invite more players to the league if they'd like. Like most of the changes this year, it's not a major addition, but with the right players, it can mean a huge boost to the online longevity.
There are a ton of little things that we haven't touched on too; things like controlling the strength of a throw or telling a baserunner exactly where to go refine things, and should you spend a ton of time tweaking all your settings, you can actually save and upload them now as a MySliders option that others can download if they'd like. It's things like these that have the potential to win over folks that thought they didn't like sports sims, and for long-time fans of the series, they really serve to strengthen what was already there.
We still have a few months to go before the game actually hits stores (it's still slated for baseball season next year), and we haven't yet had the option to play around with the feature-identical PSP and PS3 versions, but given that the PS2 one runs at a gorgeous 60 frames a second and looks absolutely fantastic, we're guessing there aren't going to be any glaring differences between the three. If learn of any, or get an updated build of the game, we'll be sure to let you know.
It's hard to know where to start. Everything that made last year's game great, from the obsessively deep career and franchise modes with 40 player team management to stat tracking clearly done by programmers with OCD to a wealth of mini-games, tons of motion-captured data (including a branching animation system that lets you change a play on the fly while still keeping things nice and smooth) and one-off modes for just jumping into things right down to online play, minor league teams and hot and cold zones for batters and pitchers, all of this returns, which should make folks that bit on last year's game even more antsy for the 07 follow-up.
Perhaps it's just that, as an office full of guys that not only avoid sports games, but looooove to pick on them for offering little more than roster updates and tweaks that probably aren't needed, we couldn't help but love some of the risk/reward dynamics in the last game, and it's clear that the boys and girls down in San Diego understood this. They included elements of role-playing games (or at the very least strategy games), they deepened the online modes and they lengthened the single-player career modes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.
Arguably the biggest addition is the one that also incorporates some of the little tweaks and improvements to the basic game. The new Road to The Show Mode lets you start out in the minors and work your way up to the MLB in a single position, playing both offense and defense (previously when playing defense you handled all of the fielding) and building your character with stat point increases earned by fulfilling position-specific goals during a game. You'll also have to manage requests from your coach during the season; sometimes this will come in the form of clutch game moments (a la the new NBA Replay feature in NBA 07 that will present you with certain moments from the season that you have a direct impact in changing.
It sounds like things are stripped down, given that you're only playing one position, and if you've picked an outfield spot, it's possible that you won't quite be in the mix, but if you pick a baseman -- or, more demandingly, a pitcher -- you'll often be called upon to quickly sub in on a position or a play. It really is a cool way of getting sucked into a game and it expands the defensive aspects far more. Of course, when you step up to the plate, you still have to combat hot and cold zones, and the same familiar (and, if we may say, kick ass) batting mechanics are in place. Should you need the advice, you can press a button to find out how true your timing and aim was for a base hit.
It's when you're on the mound that the game gets a little deeper this year. Thanks to a handful of factors that are almost always being tracked, you'll have to balance what pitches the catcher is calling for (dubbed Adaptive Pitching Intelligence and culled from tons of real-life MLB data) with pitches your pitcher is confident in using (the new Pitch Command System). It's not just as simple as painting the areas the pitcher calls for with the pitches he recommends, though; as you use specific pitches more and more, you'll gain confidence, but the others will fall.
It's that whole risk/reward thing we were talking about, and it makes every contest between mound and plate seem relevant. As a pitcher, you'll also have to worry about umpires, who now have their own personalities regarding how they call pitches. Given that the MLB series delights in complicating things with individual strike zones based on batter size, it's far more complicated than just sticking pitches inside the indicated strike zone, and feeling out an ump's calls becomes just as important as learning batters' strike zones.
Though this is very much a tertiary glance at the new stuff (and we're sure the die-hards will pick up on any little tweaks we just haven't noticed), there's still one major addition that's been added this year, and Sony is hoping it'll bolster the online play significantly. You can now organize your own leagues, allowing up to 30 players or as few as six, with tweaks to the length (6-182 games), pick a league commissioner, and distribute awards and penalties for just your league. League wins actually go onto your online scorecard, and commissioners have the option to invite more players to the league if they'd like. Like most of the changes this year, it's not a major addition, but with the right players, it can mean a huge boost to the online longevity.
There are a ton of little things that we haven't touched on too; things like controlling the strength of a throw or telling a baserunner exactly where to go refine things, and should you spend a ton of time tweaking all your settings, you can actually save and upload them now as a MySliders option that others can download if they'd like. It's things like these that have the potential to win over folks that thought they didn't like sports sims, and for long-time fans of the series, they really serve to strengthen what was already there.
We still have a few months to go before the game actually hits stores (it's still slated for baseball season next year), and we haven't yet had the option to play around with the feature-identical PSP and PS3 versions, but given that the PS2 one runs at a gorgeous 60 frames a second and looks absolutely fantastic, we're guessing there aren't going to be any glaring differences between the three. If learn of any, or get an updated build of the game, we'll be sure to let you know.
