"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." - Saul Steinberg
"This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." - Bull Durham
For hardcore baseball fans, especially those who write for a living, it's easy to get swept away in the romanticism of the game. Our National pastime has inspired more overwrought purple prose and misty-eyed recollections than anything else in American culture. To the non-fan it may seem silly -- indeed many non-fans outright hate the game -- but the yearly approach of opening day is something akin to Christmas to us fans, regardless if you loved the game from in front or behind the backstop.
Fans of video-game baseball have been less lucky over the years. A number of different baseball game series -- both of the simulation and arcade varieties -- have come and gone over the years, with varied levels of quality, making it rare to be looking forward to the arrival of baseball video game season. But for the last five years, Sony has been delivering a product exclusive to their PlayStation platforms that not only has continued to improve each year, but has developed into a baseball simulation so good that I'm almost as excited for its release as I am for opening day itself.
Those who've seen but maybe not played MLB 11: The Show on PS3 are aware of the game's impressive graphical fidelity. It's easily the most realistic-looking sports video game ever, with highly realistic lighting and very believable player models. They're not all perfect matches, but most are easily recognizable in the game. Accurate stadium recreations and uniform designs are just scratching the surface of how deep the presentation goes to recreate every little detail of what it's like to watch a real game. Even the crowd animations, which include things like fans reaching into the field to grab foul grounders and beach balls bouncing around the stands -- which can be highly annoying to purists in real life -- contribute to that real feeling of being there. The designers at Sony's San Diego studio couldn't do much more besides shipping the game with a free hot dog and a beer.
But presentation means nothing if the core gameplay isn't nailed like a fat slider over the plate. Thankfully, it is. New this year are analog controls for hitting, pitching and throwing, and while many baseball games have tried to take better advantage of the dual analog sticks over the years, MLB 11: The Show seems to have refined the idea almost to perfection. Pitching makes total sense, as your ability to accurately place the sticks at the necessary angles to place the ball on the inside or outside of the plate defines whether or not you throw unhittable strikes or leave pitches out over the plate in very hittable areas. The focus is not on complex shapes to the movement to throw different pitch styles, but rather a balance been pitch choice and simple execution.
The analog hitting controls are similarly focused on accurate timing, which is of course meaningless if you choose to swing at bad pitches. So much of the pitcher/batter duel in real life is dependent on working the count and picking your pitch to hit, that actual execution is oftentimes a secondary concern. At least with great hitters. They know how to hit, and have refined and practiced their swings for years, so the strategy element almost outweighs the actual delivery of your swing or pitch, though mistakes are easily amplified if you don't have those mechanics down or are controlling a player of lesser talents.
The analog throwing while in the field is the weaker point here, with a smaller risk/reward disparity that almost makes it a bit too easy. Occasional hiccups in the animations are just that, occasional, so most of the time it looks really smooth and sweet. But throwing errors seem a bit dialed up at times too. It's not a bad or broken system in any way, but it doesn't quite have that same polish and overall nice feel that the pitching and hitting have.
Baserunning is my other big complaint, as it almost always is in baseball videogames. Just getting a guy to smoothly round a base or try to leg out a shallow double feels clunky at times, and controlling the on-base action while you're at the plate can often feel like a distraction. More than anything this feels like an A.I. tuning issue, but considering it's one of those things that seems to be so hard to get right, it's a little more forgivable. It wasn't often I felt like the game cheated me out of an extra base -- I just want my players to be a bit more like real players, and take that extra base when they obviously can.
With core mechanics mostly down pat, and a visual presentation that might have you mistaking it for a real game on TV, MLB 11: The Show would have me right there. As a purist, that's mostly all I need. But The Show turns around and goes a couple of extra miles by providing a plethora of modes beyond the typical Franchise and Exhibition modes (which by the way, are great on their own.) Road To The Show is back again, with greatly improved progression through your minor league career and tons of training based mini-games that really make the mode feel like a true RPG. But with orcs being replaced by the Dodgers, armor with myriad uniform options, and enchanted swords with customized bats. Some of the specific positions you can play in RTTS have even been improved, with catchers calling the pitches for an entire game now. It's good to see the backstops getting the respect they deserve -- they're the real quarterback on the field, not the pitcher. Or maybe the defensive coordinator, something like that.
MLB 11: The Show is so full of the heart and soul of baseball that even jaded baseball video gamers have to admit how close it is to the real thing. The inclusion of so many modes -- from RTTS, to Rivalry, to even playing co-operatively with another human player on your team -- is just icing on the cake, and more material to keep you from getting bored in the middle of a long season of adjusting your rosters and playing each and every one of the 162 games in a season. Real fans, like yours truly, don't find that boring at all, but I still appreciate everything MLB 11: The Show has to offer. It's the best baseball game since 3DO's High Heat series from a decade ago, and could quite possibly be one of the best and most complete sports games I've ever played. To put it cheekily, Sony has absolutely knocked it out of the park.
PROS: Captures not only the core mechanics of baseball, but also the little details in the crowd and player animations that make the game so unique; one of the best applications of analog controls in a sports game ever; more modes than you can shake a fungo at; Road to the Show treats your athlete like a character in an RPG.
CONS: Baserunning and analog throwing controls do still need a little work; the beach balls bouncing around the crowd may be realistic, but they still annoy me in real life; the announcer AI is well-programmed, but because I'm a Giants fan I could do without Dodger color man Eric Karros in the booth. Give me Kruk and Kuip!
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