Starting with 2006's re-branding (and re-invention) of Sony's baseball
series as "The Show", developer San Diego Studios has steadily evolved
a rock-solid core gameplay model to the stupidly high level of
excellence it's at now.
I honestly couldn't imagine how SCEA could elevate the series after
playing last year's MLB 08. Sure, some oddities could be fixed, some
new details could be added to online or franchise modes, but the game
was already at such a high level, I expected the franchise to stay at
this plateau.
Stupid me, because not only does MLB 09 improve on 08's release, it
renders it obsolete. Excellent revisions to the hitting and fielding
mechanics makes you feel closer than ever to playing out a real Major
League game. Each game
you play will surprise you. The hit variety doesn't even seem like a
pre-selected "variety" -- it's just real. Balls will fly off your bat
however physics allows it. Shots down the line, doubles over
outfielders' heads, bloopers over infielders, triples buried in
outfield corners. The full array of hits will now take place.
Fielding mechanics are the other side to this coin. You could have
great hit variety, but without good fielding mechanics, it wouldn't
count for much. Outfielders now take natural routes to balls. It looks
real and feels real. Infielders are no longer ball vaccuums, instantly
sucking up any ball near them. Fielding stats and how hard the ball is
hit now impact what plays out. Hot shots will pop out of or ricochet
off mitts. Throwing animations now make double-plays more natural to
pull off.
Franchise mode takes a new level of strategy in roster management, as
an entirely revamped offseason changes how you deal with negotiating
contracts. The contract meter system is gone, where you could just
punch in different numbers until your player re-signed with you. Now
you have to make an offer and hope your guy comes back to the team.
Low-ball guys with arbitration if you don't care about them, and get
draft picks when other teams sign them, just like in real life MLB.
You'll have to be much more generous with free agents and even your own
players. CPU teams will out-bid you and run after premiere talent just
as hard as you do.
Player development is a mixed bag. Progression is ultimately tied to each player's (uneditable) "potential" rating. The developers claim this isn't set in stone -- A potential players are not guaranteed to be superstars, while C potential players could theoretically develop into Major League role players. The idea is to mimic the somewhat unpredictable nature of real-life scouting and development. In practice, there aren't any surprises visible over several seasons of franchise play. A potential players will develop the strongest, jumping 10 to 15 skill points each year, while B potential brings in about 5 to 8 skill points overall. C-potential players rarely progress at all, while D-potential players only get worse.
Aging players are handled strangely. Stats and performance do not
gradually fade as a player ages and eventually retires. Instead,
retirements happen according to age or "free agent market conditions."
This will lead to bizarre situations where someone hits .300 / 20 / 85
but decides to quit the game just because they turn 37 years old and
that's apparently their age to hang it up.
Online performance is serviceable but ultimately depends on how good
the connection your opponent has. The graphics take a hit. Intermittant frame loss or freezing is a common problem, making games an uneven and frustrating experience. Steady games are great fun, but don't expect more than half of your attempted online games to play without problems.
Online leagues suffer from unintuitive commissioner tools and buggy design. While it's great to see a live draft
option instead of using stock rosters, as well as new flex games to let
people play games out of order with whoever's available online, each doesn't quite play out like you might hope. Live drafts were recently patched in order to allow players who were free agents in the off-season to actually appear on your drafted team. An unmentioned time limit would also halt live drafts in progress at the 2-hour mark and automatically finish the draft, regardless of what round your league was in. Then once you
prepare your league settings and invite players, you cannot change
anything. And you'll probably screw something up because the options
aren't explained very well, so you'll have to scratch the entire league
and re-form and re-invite players with fixed options. You can choose a
league set up with two divisions, but when players join, they can go in
whichever division they like and you might wind up with uneven
divisons, which screws up the scheduling.
Also, live draft scheduling is a mess. The system doesn't schedule it
until you activate the league, which locks in all the players. If
you're waiting for some late invites to come in on Sunday, then
activate the league hoping to do your draft on the same day, the joke's
on you. The system thinks you're planning to do it next Sunday, so wait
another week.
There is also a 14-day waiting period before you can even form a
league, as well as 10 games played online minimum and a peer rating
minumum of 3 out of 5 stars. So you better hope your opponents are kind
to you, otherwise you won't be able to form a league.
The final point worth mentioning is the excellent user contributions
you can make to the game now -- custom walk-up or closer into music
make a pretty huge impact on the game. The music gets a stadium filter
applied to it so it sounds like it's actually coming out of a ballpark
sound system. In-sane. Custom rosters can also be easily shared in-game
through the online service, and the ratings help the cream of the crop
stand out.
