MLB 06 The Show is the latest baseball game from Sony. As most of the gaming audience knows, last year 2K Games purchased the 'exclusive third party' license for baseball videogames. What that means is that EA won't be making a game this year, but first parties (ie console makers like Sony) can continue to make baseball games. As someone who is a proponent of choice, this is definitely a good thing. Sony is first out of the gate this year with an MLB game, and you could easily not even bother with the other baseball game if you so choose.
For the PS2 version, you'll notice the menus have been graphically enhanced. There's also a new King of the Diamond mode, and we'll talk about that later.
Of course, exhibition is a quick one off game. Approximately three years ago, Sony added a 'career mode' to the baseball game, a novel idea at the time. This mode continues to be one of my favorite modes because if you have an Eye Toy camera, you can literally put yourself in the game and work your way to "The Show" (get it?). Of course, there aren't many fat 34 year old rookies in baseball that can throw 97mph, but it sure is fun to dream. Instead of managing a team through a season, you become a player. You create the player's name, age, height, weight, jersey number and primary playing position. Using a variety of attribute points you define your player. For a starting pitcher, do you boost up on stamina, or try to give up less home runs per 9 innings? You decide, but you only have a finite amount of points.
Once you've set up the player, you then choose the team you wish to play for and the in-game options. You are then given a list of achievements you need to accomplish in Spring Training. Obviously the better you perform, the better your contract. The worse you perform, you'll probably not even get a contract.
If you do get a contract, the fun really begins - aside from the regular gameplay, you can also give feedback. Request a trade, let the press in on a club house secret, demand a call up from the minors if you're in AAA - anything you do of course can affect you and the team in different ways.
Yes, that's right, I said minor leagues. They are here in the game and you can play them out in the detailed franchise mode. Don't expect deep or accurate rosters however - in my time with the Orioles there were quite a few MLB level players in Ottawa (the AAA team)…and these were players with the Orioles the whole year last year, so it seemed a little odd. In fact the only players I could recognize were Major Leaguers. Apparently getting the minor league players license wasn't in the cards.
Season mode and Franchise modes are here in full effect. New this year is also a Rivalry mode. It will actually sort out stats between your most hated, um, rivals. Neat idea - nothing earth shattering here, but definitely a nice touch.
Gameplay hasn't changed much from last year. Fans of High Heat will be pleased to learn that you can guess the pitch and the hitting area, just like last year. An extra difficulty level has been added for an extra challenge. You can use a standard swing or a power swing. The batter animations are very good and if you are swinging high and inside at a low and outside pitch, it looks very awkward - as it should. The pitcher/batter interface is one of the better ones I've used. Reading breaking pitches can be easy - or difficult depending on the pitcher.
I was impressed with the gameplay - there are walks and strikeouts and not a lot of balls in play on the first pitch. The biggest issue with gameplay is control in the outfield. As is common with many baseball games, the player closest to the ball is not always the best fielder to pick up the ball. Quite often, the system selects the center fielder to run half way across the outfield when it makes more sense for the left fielder to play the ball. As is always the case you are playing guide the player to the ball circle to catch the ball. It's not a bad system but in MLB 06 it is a challenge because the ball circle may not be where the ball ends up - it all depends on the difficulty level. You'll have a 'general' radius circle and a 'ball' circle. It's a neat idea, but it still assumes you can move your guy to that general direction. When a ball is moving fast into the outfield, it seems like your player has a great way to overcome sometimes.
In-game stats are very well done. It's one of the few baseball games that does a boxscore right in my book—everything is done in the right way and the scoring seems right to me. A lot of games seem to have simple logic, automatically calling a pass ball an error, even if a runner doesn't advance. I have not seen glaring problems like that in this game. If you can't tell, High Heat on the PC is one of my favorite games of all time, and MLB 06 comes closest to that videogame feeling.
You can choose to pitch using the 'golf meter' or the traditional cursor pitch method. It's a nice touch to see that the 'old' methods of playing baseball games are available and that you aren't just stuck with the pitch meter.
In addition to the career and season modes, there's also online play and a new King of The Diamond mode. The King of the Diamond mode is an interesting mini game, which you can also play online. You are given a specific amount of time to score as many runs as possible. Hitting certain targets will allow you to increase your time, while other targets will decrease your time. It's a challenging and fun little game.
The online functionality is very well done. You can even download news from your favorite teams for offline viewing if you so choose. While you can play in tournaments, you can't form your own league.
Audio is a three man booth this time around and is still very good. The banter between the three is very impressive - it seems like the audio is very fluid and doesn't sound like a voice mail recording. From time to time, the audio can be running behind the actual gameplay, however.
Graphically the game looks pretty good, although after spending lots of time with an Xbox 360, you certainly notice a decrease in quality. Let's just say that the game looks great by PlayStation 2 standards. Double plays really feel like double plays - diving for grounders and the physics of the ball are amazing. You can really feel what you hit from the batter/pitcher interface. A pop up 'feels' like a pop up—if that makes sense.
Many years, fans of baseball games ask companies to just fix what was broken last year and keep the rest as is. MLB 06 The Show for the PS2 does just that, but adds a more robust online mode and a King of the Diamond mode that is also enjoyable. Rivalry isn't a bad idea, but feels more like a gimmick this year. In conclusion, I'm glad that we have choices like this and aren't stuck to one game to choose from, like in football. MLB 06: The Show is well worth your time if you're still using your PlayStation 2.
