MLB The Show 2007
Score: 87% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment America Developer: SCEA San Diego Studio Media: UMD/1 Players: 1 - 2; 1 - 30 (Online) Genre: Sports (Baseball)
Graphics & Sound: Overall, there is a lot of work to be done within MLB 07: The Show to bring the stadiums and crowds up to speed. While functional, they’re not going to blow air up anyone’s knickers. The player models, however, are a different story, and it’s pretty obvious where the PSP’s processing power and texture memory are going. Crisper and more defined, they are the show within The Show. The game’s complex game mechanics, combined with a reasonable set of animations, seem to be more than a match for the PSP’s system architecture. There are continual dips in the framerate from play to play and this keeps the overall graphic presentation from scoring higher. To paraphrase Tom Hanks in A League of Their Own, “Framerate issues?! There’s no framerate issues in baseball!!” And really, even in this case, Hanks would be right. The sound within the game is basically the same as last years, which is to say – good! The sound designers and programmers were able to eliminate some of the latency issues between gameplay and the spoken word that describes it this year, and the switch to a three man booth was a welcome change.
Gameplay: The gameplay in MLB 07: The Show is fine. It’s baseball, not Halo 3, for crying out loud. However, some of the game modes are worth mentioning: Road to the Show is this game’s Career mode and it is like George Brett adding pine tar before a key at bat. Road to the Show allows you to play the game as a position player. You’re not the GM and you’re not the manager and you can basically ignore the rest of the team. It’s all about you, baby. You’ll receive tasks to accomplish based on the in-game situation and you have to execute them or incur the wrath of your bosses. This can include situational hitting, like moving the runner to third with less than two outs, hitting a sacrifice fly, or simply laying down a bunt for a sacrifice. Do the right thing and your stats rise; fail and you’re riding the pine in a New York minute. This is a fun mode, especially because you skip from at bat to at bat during the game, minimizing the time you’re sitting and watching other people do their own thing. But be careful setting yourself up during the initial phase of this game mode; you can’t change your position once you’ve started. MLB 07: The Show also has the requisite online gameplay features, such as joining online leagues of up to 30 separate teams and establishing leaderboards, playoffs and other items. A player can also choose to be the commissioner of his league, establishing separate rules and league schedules (yawn!!!). It is even possible, thanks to the Online Player Card, to measure whether the person on the other side of the screen, so to speak, is a worthy challenge or just another bum from Flatbush. The Online Player Card shows you such things as whether an opposing player likes to disconnect if he falls behind by a number of runs late in the game, or what difficulty rating they like to play with.
Difficulty: Yo … it’s baseball. You can set difficulty levels and play within that framework. But essentially whatever level you select, you still got to master pitching, hitting, and defense. All the power in the world won’t help you if you can’t throw to the right base. Because of all the changes in the pitching dynamic, it is fairly easy to overthink the pitch selection and the delivery and that's a very dangerous thing. Remember in the film Bull Durham, when catcher Crash Davis says, "Relax, all right? Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they're fascist. Throw some ground balls - it's more democratic." Take that to heart, all you pitchers out there. Don't think too much, just rear back and let it fly. In the game's favor, the player never gets the feeling that he or she cannot nail the occasional home run (sometimes more than occasional), a dramatic double or triple, or even the scratch single to win the game.
Game Mechanics: Because last year’s Zone Control Batting system scored so strongly, this year’s MLB 07: The Show puts the focus squarely on the pitcher. A two part system targets the pitcher; the first part is the Pitch Command System, the second is the Improved Pitch Mechanics. The Pitch Command System places each pitcher’s pitches on the face buttons in order from strongest to weakest, and it also allows the player to gauge the pitcher’s confidence level from pitch to pitch as the pitch is leaving his hand. Pound the plate with more strikes and watch the pitcher’s confidence meter get stronger. How does this help? The confident pitcher’s fastball will travel faster than Pete Rose laying down $20 on the Reds, while his curve will break with more drama than the finale of American Idol. The second part of the Improved Pitch Mechanics is called Adaptive Pitching Intelligence. During the game, the catcher will read the situation and will suggest a pitch that might help you get ahead in the count or close out a batter with a key strike. The catcher gives you the pitch and a location where you should try to throw it. Of course, you can waive his decision and choose another pitch, but the easy money is on establishing that good pitcher/catcher relationship, taking the receiver’s guidance, and delivering the proper pitch where he is expecting it. MLB 07: The Show also provides very cool tools to judge the umpire and whether he’s got a tight strike zone, or one that’s just right. While admirable on the outside of the box (in the fine print defining game features …), this is actually a tough feature because unlike real players who have a book on different umpires, the MLB 07: The Show player has to really bear down during the first few innings to discover what the umpire’s tendencies are. This can be particularly hard because you never want to feel like the umpire jobbed you out of a big inning (or the other team into one). The game has other new control features that determine such things as a fielder’s arm strength and whatnot, but they really aren’t as important as the ones listed above, especially since the game itself often determines how hard a ball is thrown based on the fielder’s position to the base. MLB 07: The Show for Sony's PSP benefits from a narrow market. Perhaps that's why the framerate lags were allowed to stay in the shipping version. If you can get past that flaw, or if you simply have to have baseball on your own PSP, then you can either buy last year's game (really cheap, too) or lay down some scratch for this game that's actually very deep and fun to play.
-Jetzep, GameVortex Communications AKA Tom Carroll
God of War II Frontline: Fields of Thunder