#3 MLB The Show '19 (PS4)
MLB The Show resides in a bit of a strange place for me. Obviously I love baseball and Major League Baseball or this wouldn't be a game I would bother to play. And The Show does such an incredible job of recreating this venerable league I have followed and loved since I was just a little tyke. The presentation has been great from the beginning and has only gotten better with the passage of time, new hardware, and new installments. Seeing the majestic stadiums, teams and players so authentically recreated in digital form has been such a treat to the gamer and baseball fan within. The programmers behind the series are obviously an incredibly dedicated bunch and work very hard to express the little nuances that excite the fans of the league. The stances, animations, venues and all the little details are all so painstakingly recreated. I especially loved playing at the funky Polo Grounds, one several classic stadiums within the game. It made me wish there was a really unique stadium like it in today's' game. Overall, The Show truly is a beautifully articulated love letter to the professional baseball league in America, and I love it so much for that.
And the gameplay itself does a really nice job of capturing the sport. I love the guess pitch/location mechanic. It really places me within the shoes of the hitter looking for that juicy ball. And the pitching meter and location system works wonderfully as an analogue for being on the mound. I also love that the series has increasingly offered options in terms of mechanics so that you can really tailor the experience to your preferences. It does a great job overall in recreating the sport mechanically.
On the other side of the coin, however, both the league and the sport itself, albeit to a lesser degree, don't really lend themselves to an interactive digital product as well as I would like. In terms of the former, MLB plays a 162 game schedule. A 162 GAME SCHEDULE! I love the history of the sport and the tradition and all the statistical records that are bound to such a long schedule, but in terms of enjoying things as a gamer, it's a tall ask to engage in so many games per season if you want to, you know, play other games or
do other things in life. And that's just a single season. I love franchise modes in sports gaming. Besides donning the uniform of your team for the on-field action, it's so fun to take on the role of GM to develop the club in accordance with your vision - to build a winner over time. That's the dream of a sports fan, and to recreate that dream via gaming is a strong pull for the fan within. But if you play every game, every at-bat, every pitch, it will take
forever to play a single season, let alone experience the evolution of your franchise and league over time. But if you don't engage with the day-to-day moments, if you sim parts of seasons and/or games there is - for me - a sense of detachment from the stats and results. It's different in a pure management sim than it is in The Show because you are not down on the field, managerial decisions aside. But The Show is designed to be
played on the field, to wait out an at bat patiently for your pitch and witness the crack of the bat as you connect or to make that perfect pitch to get that big strikeout in a pressure situation. So you are left with either an impossible grind or a sense of disengagement because you didn't play many of the games. Not an ideal recipe for the franchise lover.
Of course, I have to acknowledge that there are other ways to play. The Show is all about options. Road to the Show is a mode that I have enjoyed very much in the past, and it's a great fantasy to take on the role of a player working your way from the minors through, hopefully, a Hall of Fame career. But this falls prey to the same time sink that playing seasons or franchise mode does. Things develop so slowly, and you can feel like you are just stuck in molasses, forced to watch things develop so gradually on - what feels like - your
inevitable road to fame and glory. It just has this punitive sense of controlling your time for such minimal and glacial reward. Overall the series is such a jealous game that desperately wants your attention -
all of it. And before I forget, Diamond Dynasty is an interesting mode, but for me, baseball is a sport that
cannot suffer from even the slightest or occasional lag due to the timing required at the plate/on the mound, and while the experience is pretty good - and surely has gotten better, it's not as good as it needs to be.
And, for me, the actual sport of baseball itself, the nuts and bolts, is less conducive to a successful digital recreation than some other sports. The pace of play and the downtime don't lend themselves as well to gaming as, say, soccer, hockey, basketball or even football with their less uneven flow and action. This is not a criticism of baseball, of course. I just don't find it to be as engaging in the translation from actual field to controller as I do with some other sports. And in terms of the mechanical interactions and outcome, you can often square up a ball with perfect timing at the plate and you just hit it on a line to a fielder. And while this may be very much in harmony with the actual sport, a sense of control or reward for playing well can feel taken away. I often felt the sense that the game was deciding outcomes of my play within the context of some larger, unseen formula for player engagement rather than letting things play out according to the actual physics driving the game. For this reason, I ironically feel much more engaged in a management simulation like Out of the Park or Strat-O-Matic where I'm just in charge of putting the pieces in place and letting them perform according to their abilities rather than directly controlling them.
As much as I wish this wasn't true, the game functions best as a local multiplayer experience with two buds sitting down for a game, series or maybe even an imaginary World Series. And it
really shines in that regard. In the quest to recreate the MLB, however, many concessions to fun and accessibility have to inevitably be made, and things have gotten more bloated and unwieldy with the primary franchise and RTTS modes as the series has progressed, to the point that it could be easy to feel utterly overwhelmed with options.
As much as I love The Show, there's a part of me that has to acknowledge that it is much better in theory than in practice, than in a real life that involves other responsibilities, other interests, other people, and ideally - gasp - even other games. It's a perfect desert island or retirement game where you can fully lose yourself within its glory without the messy practicalities of living your life. And that's its greatest flaw. It just wants
so much from the player in terms of time. This is not the fault of the game itself so much as it is the consequence of having a product so faithfully recreated based upon a league that offers so much in the way of content/games. It's just a case of choking on a delicious smorgasbord that is so good, and there's just so much you want to eat, but there's no way to reasonably ever do it. If it sounds like I don't actually enjoy The Show, you'd be forgiven for having that view based on what I've written. I can see that. But that is not the case. I really love it, but I can't give it the attention that it wants from its players or the dedication I'd
like to give it in order to really feel fully satisfied. I want to play ever pitch of a 40 year-plus franchise and watch the evolution of my team and the league unfold slowly, and enjoy all the little story lines that inevitably develop over that marathon. But, realistically, I just can't. And because of that, I'm left with a sense of frustration, despite how much I really love the series. That doesn't change the fact that I have spent tons of hours over multiple iterations of The Show. Nor does it diminish how much I have enjoyed it. I'm just left with an incomplete feeling, if that makes any sense.
In the end, MLB The Show is both wonderful and wonderfully frustrating. But, I'm so drawn to it that I forgive it its imperfections, because it does so much so well. I will likely never feel like I completely scratched the itch that this game induces in me, but that doesn't mean that I don't have a great deal of fun trying.
5/5.
). I am going to hold off a minute on mine because I want to go a little more in depth as well (gaming was like...THE thing last year and I want to show some proper respect to what I played).
But if I find myself up there again, I'll surely let you know. That is if they don't shut New York down. 
