Here’s the thing about sports games: When a game makes a huge leap forward graphically, like MLB ’06 on PS2, it’s difficult to take it much further the following year. So the focus instead turns to improvements on game play, and in that sense, MLB ’07: The Show doesn’t disappoint. The new game, to be released February 27, features some interesting twists: For starters, the Online League Play mode, which is basically organized like Fantasy Baseball, allows players to draft a squad, maintain detailed stats, and compete with up to 30 other teams.
Other new features include the “Road to the Show” player creation mode where you can design your own athlete and assign every physical attribute imaginable. You follow the player from spring training to the “The Show” – the Big Leagues – completing various tasks assigned by your manager along the way. You might come to the plate with 1 out and a man on third. The assignment is to hit a sacrifice fly to the outfield, thus scoring the run at third. The more situations you complete, the closer you get to the majors.
Jason Villa, the game’s head producer, highlighted additional features like the camera angles, which make the game feel more realistic than any baseball game I’ve seen. “One thing we’ve always prided ourselves on is presentation,” he said, “making sure you feel like you’re experiencing a real game.” The perspective of your pitcher, for instance, is not from the catcher’s view, but from behind the hurler, as on television. Also, in “Road to the Show” mode, the perspective is always from your player’s back, regardless of where you play. If your guy plays first, you see the field from first. If he’s in the outfield, you’re looking at the game from a distance. It might sound hokey, but it’s a small touch of realism that rounds out “Road to the Show” mode nicely.
Among the other interesting new features, MLB ’07 will feature improved AI, or in this case, Adaptive Pitching Intelligence. The catcher will call the game based on both the pitcher’s strengths and the hitter’s weaknesses. When you’re pitching, you see a small display at the bottom right of the screen that gives accuracy strengths for 5 different pitches. The AI aspect is that levels of accuracy change from pitch to pitch as he becomes more and less confident, from inning to inning as he runs out of gas, and from opposing hitter to opposing hitter, as some guys are better with fastballs than changeups, and others like curves more than heaters. You really see the difference when you try two pitchers with vastly different skill levels. The better the pitcher, the easier it is to control the pitch command meter, and the greater the diversity in pitch selection.
The game will also feature umpire personalities, where certain umps have bigger strike zones than others and call a different game. If you’re playing a season, this is valuable information as you move from week to week.
Overall there’s little to complain about with MLB ’07: The Show. If you like baseball, you’ll love this game more than MLB ’06 because of the improvements, especially the new feature that allows you to check on real games while you’re playing by downloading box scores with live stat updates. If you don’t like baseball, you probably haven’t even read the review to this point, so no worries. Though it will be available on PSP and PS2, the PS3 version will obviously blow the others away.
Scott Goldberg
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