MLB 08: The Show is simply the best baseball title to date. If you want a satisfying baseball or sports title with extremely high replay value, look no further.
image Sony hits one out of the park with MLB 08: The Show. If you love baseball or just good sports games, MLB The Show is for you.
Gameplay: I need to break this into three sections: Pitching, hitting, and fielding.
Pitching - It is the best simulation pitching in any baseball game to date. You can set up your pitch with the standard cursor, but your breaking balls actually break, your pitcher has a confidence meter for each pitch. The higher, the better, the lower, the more likely his opponent at the plate will smack it fair (if not a homerun). It is loads of fun to be down in the count and in trouble and to work your way out of a jam. Also, umpires friggin' straight up cheat sometimes, just like in real baseball (or so it very often seems). They seem to favor the home team and let the pitcher (even yourself sometimes) get by with some very questionable pitches, and some very clear pitches that should've been called the other way (either ball or strike).
Batting - You can guess pitches and if you're right, you have a much better chance of hitting your own fair balls (or homers). Square is power, X is contact. I generally use contact unless I have at least a lead-off man on 2nd or 3rd. Batting really feels authentic in the game. You don't hit a homerun or double every other play, unlike most other baseball games I've played. Even when you switch down to the Rookie difficulty setting, the play feels right.
Fielding - They have lots of options for fielding, lots of control, more control than I've yet fully mastered, so I have the CPU assist me on some of it. It's still not best to leave fielding on Auto because the AI will sometimes do something mind-boggling like throw to first when you have a clear shot at a double play. Rob a Homerun is a pretty cool feature. If a shot is back near the wall where it'll clear, you can do this tiny minigame where you jump up and catch the ball if you time it just right.
Sound: The announcing gets repetitive after several hours of play, but it's pretty good considering how much you play and don't get too annoyed by it. The music is quite good overall I'd say, lots of licensed music, largely pop-rock type stuff. You can also bring in your own music, so that's good. Create Ricky Vaughn (Major League the movie) and set him to come out to "Wild Thing," it sounds and looks great. All the sound effects seem right on, especially the crack of the bat when you shatter it.
Graphics: Grade A graphics, they're crisp and beautiful, of course.
Modes: You have a very deep franchise mode, where you handle everything from concession and ticket prices to advertising and marketing to stadium upgrades, equipment upgrades, and more. You have various goals that you're trying to meet, such as turn the team profitable, win 3 pennants in 5-7 years, sign a AAA player, etc.
Road To The Show mode is the career mode where you take a single created player (such as yourself or your favorite fictitious baseball player) and play through a career with him. You start out with spring training, then they put you in the minors, probably AA. You have in-game goals that you try to reach and you just play as your player. You can skip ahead to each appearance of just your player and play only his parts instead of full games (unless you want to play the full games). The object is to take your player as far as you can, hopefully to a Cy Young Award winner or MVP in the Major Leagues, and/or a World Series champion of course.
Regular Season Mode: A standard single season like most baseball/sports games. It's still satisfying enough for a quick season, or a long season if you want to play all 162 season games, then playoffs.
Quick Play and Exhibition: Virtually the same thing. Quick Play throws you right into a game, Exhibition lets you use the AA and AAA teams and takes a couple more selections to get into the game, though not many more.
Create a Player: Very deep, TONS of sliders, you could spend forever making each player.
Replay Value: Extremely high. You could play this game on and on for a long time. I'll be playing it the whole summer I know. I highly recommend a buy, even at full price, it's worth the money, especially if you like baseball.
