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With MLB 08: The Show, Sony’s baseball franchise is finally ready for primetime. For many years now, Sony’s sports studio has been consistently improving its games. But the change from MLB 07 to MLB 08 is truly remarkable; resulting in what is currently the best PS3 baseball game.
You’ll spend most of your time in the game’s Road to the Show mode. The mode has seen quite the facelift, from the improved player creation system to the improved goals that lay out increasingly tougher goals as you get used to the game. These goals are also graded better, since the game takes into account that some things are out of control and even if you played well, you may not have accomplished the goal.
There have been many changes to the core gameplay, although most of them focus on the batting and pitching mechanism. One of the most noticeable is the addition of new pitching and batting tools that give you as much information as you desire about the player’s style and weaknesses. Against a pitcher, you can see how they fare against certain types of players, how successful they are with certain pitches, and even micro information about their last 25 pitches for people who really want to control the experience. Against batters, you can see which types of pitches they hit more often, where they go, etc. This mechanism also plays into the Progressive Batting Performance of the game, which tracks how batters are doing and indicates how much confidence the player has going into the game. Players with a ton of confidence will obviously play better, and the game manages to introduce this without sacrificing the game’s balance.
There are also other improvements. For example, the AI seems tighter this time around and performs more realistically, in line with what you’d expect from a human opponent. There is a Rob Home Run feature that lets you know when you effectively “steal” a home run by catching the ball before it hits the fences and baserunning is more responsive this time around. There are also cool features like the ability to save in the middle of games, plenty of stat tracking, and the ability to keep replays available for the duration of the game. That last feature means that the game-making play you made in the first inning will be available when you finish, so you can show your opponent just how you won the game, although you can’t export these online or save them to the hard disk.
MLB 08: The Show’s online component is stronger this time around. The game includes the expected roster updates, and leaderboards, but also adds something similar to Xbox Live’s OptiMatch, where you can have the game search for opponents that meet certain criteria. There are also some community features in the form of being able to use the PlayStation Eye camera to create an avatar and the ability to download player cards from opponents.
Visually, MLB 08 looks fantastic. Players look great, with plenty of detail in their faces and body builds. The animations have been greatly improved, too, so not only do the plays look great but you’ll also see the players show emotion when a play goes particularly well or poorly. The stadiums look excellent, down to blades of grass, and of course feature a great looking crowd. The new-gen effects like the depth of field and cloth textures round up the package.
The game’s audio is good, too. There is a new feature that lets you add songs from the PS3’s hard drive to the game, although this is limited to the menu screens. The game’s sound effects accurately capture the sounds of baseball, and the crowd effects are particularly good. The commentary in the game is provided by Rex Hudler, Matt Vasgersian and Dave Campbell, who sound great together.
MLB 08: The Show easily wins the “most improved” award but it may very well be the best PS3 baseball game. It plays well, looks amazing, and really showcases the power of the PS3. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Mar 5, 2008
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