![]() ![]() Sure, you can sim Road to the Show games, but they go quick enough that you probably won’t want to. Working on my multi-week goals – and of course ultimately reaching the majors – was a massive incentive to keep playing. New this year is the much appreciated ability to press L1 in order to pick up your third-base coach when running the base paths and hitting R1 to track the ball. Satisfaction is delivered in 5 to 10-minute bursts when you recreate yourself (or chosen stand-in) as a minor leaguer in the farm system of your favorite team, choose your position (I always fancied myself a second baseman), and play out your at-bats and fielding opportunities. Perhaps worth the purchase purely on its own is the returning Road to the Show mode. Even fielding is fun, thanks to MVP Baseball 2005-style throwing meters that let you make slow, easy tosses or risk a quick zinger to first if you’re rushed. Same goes for hitting: variety is laudable, with a fair mix of broken bats, dribblers, simple groundouts, line drives, popups, and homers that happen whether you pick buttons, zone-based, or (my preference, because it feels the most like a real swing) pure analog. The latter is my method of choice the timing minigame based on a pitcher’s real-life control and in-game fatigue adds an extra element of skill to throwing. Pitching feels great however you like to control your throws, whether it’s pure analog, simple button press, or the Pulse Pitching added last year. Errors like those, of course, only rarely interfere with the rock-solid gameplay that's earned this series great scores for the past three years. What should’ve been a double went for an extra base because my outfielder was stuck outside of the gameplay space. Occasionally, that problem extends beyond illusion-shattering and into gameplay-breaking, such as the time I witnessed Diamondbacks centerfielder Adam Eaton go through the outfield wall like the ghost of the Kool-Aid Man in an effort to run down a deep fly ball that ended up (correctly) bouncing off the fence. And I saw a number of instances of player clipping, where a baserunner would momentarily merge with a fielder - a clear violation of both MLB regulations and molecular physics. They just sit back reciting obviously canned lines that convey the same level of natural emotional reaction to your on-field antics as Siri reading last night's box scores. Second, the returning three-man commentary crew doesn’t sound particularly connected to what’s happening on your virtual field. Stadium crowds, for example, look almost 8-bit in some ballparks, which is incredibly jarring compared to the convincing player models. And it wasn't until I looked a bit closer that significant imperfections started to show. Except one, I noticed: The Show's baserunners will not automatically run on the pitch in a 3-2 count with 2 outs in the inning. It’s an amazingly nuanced display of realism that captures a sport built on a mountain of unwritten rules and potential scenarios. Regardless of camera angle, I was impressed at the way every player’s batting stance, pitching motion, and signature gesture - no matter how small - is accounted for and replicated. I enjoyed bolstering this illusion using the “Broadcast” camera mode, which closely replicates the perspectives you see when watching a real ballgame on TV, but there are also plenty of more traditional video game views, such as one that lets you pitch from the catcher’s perspective. Player faces, animations, and stadium details are just that good, and interface details are convincingly TV-like. The former are again capable of fooling passersby into thinking it’s a real baseball telecast from afar. With The Show, two things immediately leapt out at me: the visuals and the gameplay. ![]()
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