MLB 08: The Show Review

[stockstar1138]

I am running the game at 720p/60 via HDMI

Graphics: Improved over last years version. Especially character models and lighting. I can tell what pitcher is pitching against me simply by seeing his face from the batter's box. Very impressive. Animations have also been improved for the greater. When somebody hits a homerun, its not just the pitcher that reacts, you can see all players react to the homerun in a very realistic manner. When I dive I don't belly flop, I gracefully layout for the catch. In my demo review I stated they hadn't improved much. This isn't true for all stadiums, Turner Field for example looks a lot cleaner than it did last year, so does Coors. However, I don't see an improvement in some fields especially minor league and spring training. Last year there was an excessive amount of dirt that would get kicked up and just disappear, this is pretty much gone from this years version, which is a good thing. Things like that just make the game look nicer. Crowd acts very realistic, all rasing up when a homerun is hit or before the last out of the game. Diving and jumping for balls is very sound and much improved. The Framerate is solid. It seems like they've cut out the stupid ads like the "Hurts Donut" spoof off the "Dunking Donuts" ad. Last year when your team was out in the field, nobody was in the dugout, now people are. Crowd reacts appropriate to foul balls and such.

Now for the bad (and I'm going to be harsh here). Stadiums have no rails in them. There is still way to much fan duplication, it is down from last year in a lot of stadiums, but it still looks retarded to have 3 of the same guys doing the same exact animation simaltianiosly. I don't see anytype of vendors walking around either. The stupid beach ball thing gets me, in most parks that is banned with a capital B. Some of the off field textures look like crap. Look at the buildings behind Busch Stadium to know what I mean. The flags and the trees in Jacobs Field look straight out of last gen. if even that. It seems fans like to stay in their seats constantly because I never see them get up to go piss or get food. When a firstbaseman has to stretch to dig a ball out of the dirt, he never gets pulled off the base. Outfielders have some very awkward animations when they catch the ball, and they never miss it despite a difficult catch. If you dive for the ball and miss it, it always will hit off your glove if you are close and it will bounce once or twice and then just die, it doesn't look realistic. Quite a few jaggies in the game. There is a serious lack of depth in minor league and spring training stadiums. Blu-ray is supposed to fix issues like that, please use its capacity. Thats all I can think of.

The most important parts of graphics in my view are

1. Framerate
2. Animations
3. Textures
4. AA
5. Lighting
6. Resolution (not to get confused with texture)

MLB does 5 out of 6 of these things incredibly well, and 1 of these fairly well (AA, jaggies are still very present, but its not bad). I know I ripped kind of hard into some little things, but this is what will take the best looking sports game from a 9.0/10 to a 10/10.

Graphics: 9/10.

Sound: HOLY COW! Amazing. I feel like I am at the ball park. The crowd noises and the sound effects in the ball bark are down right 100% accurate IMO. Adding to that, the commentary seems to have really picked up over last year. For example my girlfriend and I were playing Mets v. Braves in the new Nationals park and they were talking about Brian Schnieder (mets) and specifically referred to his past with Washington and how he was a fan favorite. I have yet to hear any repititions. The soundtrack sucks in my opinion, but thats okay, because MLB 08: The Show is the first full PS3 game to support custome soundtracks. The sound of the bat and the ball could be better, but it is still solid. Pitchers warming up in the bullpen have a very nice popping sound when the ball hits the catcher's mitt. I have very, very few compliants about this year's audio. More enthusiasm out of the announcers would be nice.

Sound: 9.5/10

Gameplay: I've heard a bunch of people on the Internet complaining that The Shows gameplay is almost exactly like last year. It is, and its a good thing. The Show has always prided itself on superior gameplay which once again shines this year. The Pitching meter is simplistic, yet realistically effective, it is identical to the old MVP one, which many praised, however the ball movement from the pitcher as well as his windups are much more realistice. Batter stances are down pat. They hit exactly like their real life counterparts. The AI is terrefic, today somebody bunted, it was right on the line, the 3rd baseman looked like he was going to pick it up as it was rolling, but at the last second decided to let it roll as it was apparent the runner had a good chance of making it and the ball could go foul. Shifts are effective and realistic against particular batters. Batting seems smother than last year. One nitpick is when a player hits a walkoff homerun and he isn't the one to score the winnning run, he only gets credited with a single, which is wrong, hopefully they will fix that. Also, sometimes fielders appear to be able to get the ball out of their gloves way too quick. I've only had one collision at the plate, but the catcher dropped it like a brick, I hope this isn't going to be like the MLB 99 days, where 60% of the time the catcher drops the ball. Diving and Jumping are down well. No ridiculous over the wall catches from Chris Duncan. Solid variety of game modes. Things like API are great. I have an issue with guess pitch, because you can derive what is not coming from if it highlights if you guessed right. Replay vault is great, but its not as cool as I thought, I really don't use it that much. Load times are poor. There is a good deal of information about pitcher/batter matchups and scouting, which is very key if you are a baseball entusiast.

Gameplay: 9.3/10

Online: Originally very poor, it has been improved quite a bit. I watched my brother play 3 games the other night and it seemed much smoother and playable, a whole lot less hiccups, however they were still there sometimes. Roster updates seem to be fairly frequent. However, a lack of voice chat is a pretty big letdown. The fact that online is now playable gets the score bumped up to a....

Online: 7.5/10

Road to the Show 2.0: Best career mode in Sports right now. You can now posistion yourself any way you want in the field (to a certain degree), much more movement. The scoring system is much more realistic, I get points for my defense, so I want to become more well rounded instead of just jacking up my power, contact, and speed like last year. There is also negative points this year if you do things like get caught steealing or you strike out. You can train with only 40 points this year instead of 100. Sometimes you have to read signs from your coaches. I will be intrested to see if you get called up based in stats versus attributes, but that has yet to be seen. Minor bad things, I play CF, sometimes I get put on defense out there only to see a ball get grounded to the SS. Its not even a diving play where it could get through to me. I'm playing on Veteran and have had very realistic stats so far. And when you create your player, WOW! That is in depth.

RTTS: 9.6/10

Rivalry: I love this mode, my favorite of the whole game. I play a lot against two particular people, so the fact that we can track all our stats is awesome. However, give the people a day off, I'm having to sit people out every few days, which is goofy. However, it increases player mgt. skills.

Rivalry: 9.1/10

Franchise: Very similar to last year. If I pay money to add a hot tub or more seats, I want to be able to see the improvements to my park. There is no create a stadium which disappoints me, as EA always had that in their baseball games. However, the fact that I can gain more revenue by investing more in my stadium is realistic and makes sense. As well as things like boosting player moral and attributes by adding training features and improving travel options etc. Fan reactions to standings are good as well as the off season modes. You can't relocate or create and expansion which sucks.

Franchise: 8.5/10

Replay Value: As with all sports games, the replay value has an infinite amount, so its hard to judge. There is a fairly decent amount of unlockable content, but I've seen more.

Replay Value: 9.0/10, this isn't due to unlockable content, because that could be better, but just that sports games flat out are fun to play over and over again.

Now some things aren't equal to other things. This isn't HDD where we weight extras the same as the quality of the movie and transfer.

MLB 08: The Show is the best, most realistic baseball game, I have ever played. It is certainly the in my Top 3 favorite Sports games of all time.

Final Score: 9.2/10
-.2 (for no home-run derby)
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Official Score: 9.0/10
+.10 (improved online play)
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9.1/10

[Steelmaker]

Wow! Great in depth review Stockstar and you pretty much echo my sentiment as well on all points. This is hand down the best baseball game I've ever owned! But, like you, I see a LOT of room for improvement. I wanted to touch on a few things...

1.) The flag: I'm glad you mentioned this because it was one of the first things that caught my eye in the demo (and not in a good way). I was really hoping that it was a place holder graphic and that the final version would have more fluid flowing realistic flags. However it looks like a low rez SNES pixel created flag. True, it IS a small nitpick but it stands out like such a sore thumb up against all of the rest of the visual goodness.

2.) The crowd: You know, I guess it was just me dreaming but I had really hoped that this generation would finally usher in good looking and active 3d crowds that weren't robotic, repetitive, and lifeless. Oh well, we're either going to get this LATE in the PS3's lifetime or we'll just have to wait until next gen. I will say it has improved greatly from the cardboard cut outs of last gen but still, we have a loooong way to go! I'm with you that they need to start getting the crowds to move in and out of the stands to take concession and bathroom breaks. It also needs to show people leaving early when there's a blowout. Vendors selling stuff in the stands should be there too!

3.) Anti Aliasing: I haven't found this to be as big of a deal as you have I think. One thing to keep in mind, if you run the game at 1080p upscaled, you do get less aliasing. However the game runs at 30fps instead of 60fps. It's a buttery smooth 30fps and still very playable, but 30fps none the less. I'm like you though, I prefer 60fps at 720p.

4.) Online: So far this has been the most glaring disappointment in MLB 08: The Show. They should've had the servers ready to go at launch. There's really no excuse for this IMO. I hope they get this fixed and SOON! At this point, online gaming should NOT be treated as an afterthought and that's what this feels like with MLB 08.

[Brian Cash]

got this game yesterday and is awesome best baseball game so far

[Tanman19az]

I love this game! I'm already addicted to it! I was up all night playing the RTTS. I got pretty far! I was pissed though. I ended spring training with a .392 batting average and top leader in most the stats for my team and they sent me to AA with a lousy contract. Oh well!!

[Copywriter]

I played for 8 hours yesterday. My biggest grip with the game is RTTS mode (all I played ).

At first it's great, but once spring training is over, for me at least, it got a little unbearable. I was signed to a AA contract with the Mariners (bah, I could play on their team).

I was set to a backup role. And that's when the loading times pissed me off. Nothing is worse than waiting for the game to load, taking your one pinch hit AB, and waiting for it to load again. Rinse and repeat for 8 hours.

The games where I did start were great. So, this is one of those things where you just have to deal with it until you get a starting job.

The crowd in RTTS mode (minor league) is laughable. In one section there was maybe 6 character models repeated and doing the same thing. Looked like an NES game. I mean come on. Can't you change colors or add 4-5 random animations per character?

I also had online issues after I restarted the game. It wouldn't connect to the sports system, so gone were all the nice ticker tapes of scores and stuff. Kind of sucked.

Other than that, the game has been a blast. I'm really enjoying RTTS mode. I'll set up a franchise later next week probably. This game will more than earn my $60.

Oh, for those that don't know, think of RTTS as a "scaled down" version of the game. You're playing just your one guy from his position. So, you're not going through a full game, each pitch.

I swear I'll get out of AA soon.

My guy hit is first homer last night too, a 2-run jack.

I'd give The Show an 8.5ish. I haven't played a baseball game in ages and don't buy sports games.

[Copywriter]

Originally Posted by Tanman19az

I love this game! I'm already addicted to it! I was up all night playing the RTTS. I got pretty far! I was pissed though. I ended spring training with a .392 batting average and top leader in most the stats for my team and they sent me to AA with a lousy contract. Oh well!!

Think that's automatic. Same thing happened to me. I hit .347 with a handful of RBIs and stolen bases, but was sent to AA. Considering the team avg was .251 and the CF position was light in the organization, I should have been given a shot.

I haven't played a MLB game in years. This is a blast.

[Tanman19az]

Originally Posted by Steelmaker

3.) Anti Aliasing: I haven't found this to be as big of a deal as you have I think. One thing to keep in mind, if you run the game at 1080p upscaled, you do get less aliasing. However the game runs at 30fps instead of 60fps. It's a buttery smooth 30fps and still very playable, but 30fps none the less. I'm like you though, I prefer 60fps at 720p.

so does it look better when you play it on 720p? How do I drop my resolution down to that?

[Steelmaker]

Originally Posted by Tanman19az

so does it look better when you play it on 720p? How do I drop my resolution down to that?

What resolutions does your tv support? If it supports all of them like mine(480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p) it will automatically default to 720p if you have all of them enabled within your display settings on your PS3. The only way to get it to upscale to 1080p is to un check the 720p and 1080i display options.

It looks great upscaled to 1080p and you do gain a bit more sharpness and less aliasing. However you lose a couple of things too. One thing is the framerate drops from 60fps to 30fps. It's still runs and plays great but the difference IS noticable. Players move and react with a certain speed and fluidity at 60fps that just looks better imo. You also lose the depth of field effect you get between the players and the crowd. In 720p, the game has a depth effect where your players are extremely high rez and focused and the fans in the background are unfocused and lower rez. It gives it a more "broadcast" look. In 1080p this effect is not there and both the players and the crowd seem to be running in the same resolution.

Like I said, my preference is in 720p at 60fps but both settings look and play great! It just boils down to what you prefer. I'm just glad Sony gives us the option to run it the way we want to.

[Clark Kent]

Great review Stockstar. How realistic are the scores you're getting? Is it easy to hit homeruns or do only legitimate power hitters hit them? How are the fielding controls? Are they basically carbon copies of last year's game?

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by Clark Kent

Great review Stockstar. How realistic are the scores you're getting? Is it easy to hit homeruns or do only legitimate power hitters hit them? How are the fielding controls? Are they basically carbon copies of last year's game?

Scores I am getting 4-6, 1-2, 3-7, around that range for offline. Today online I won 9-5, lost 10-1, and won 6-1, which is a little high, but not unrealisitc, I was playing on Vet. online too vs. HoF offline.

The homeruns depends what setting you are playing on. I have found it very difficult to hit a Home Run on HoF unless you use guess pitch and hit with power with somebody like Ortiz, Rameriz, Lowell, etc. However, it is not impossible to hit a Home-run with somebody else, just isn't going to happen more than once ever 10 games (16 home-run season isn't shabby). Today I was playing on Veteran online and I hit a homerun only using avg. swing with Yunel Escobar. Now it barely made it over the wall, but it was kind of a suprise. I would say though even on Veteran, tops I was hitting 3 homeruns a game, w/o using guess pitch and with laggy online. However, I'd expect that number to go up if i was playing offline. Offline I always play HoF for exhibitions and I would say I hit at the most 3 home-runs a game, but it is def. possible to swing for the fences and not even get one out of the ball park. Home-runs are def. at a realistic level as far as I'm concerned.

Fielding controls are not carbon copies, but very similar. When a player tries to tag a runner out, it looks more realistic. Double Plays seem more realistic to turn too, last year it was way to easy to turn one. There is less of players taking forever to throw the ball too and making should be outs into close plays. There is a new over-the-wall catch indicator, its challenging to rob a home-run, I'm 0-4 with it so far. Fielding is improved, but other than those things, its near identical.

[heathward]

did you guys see that G4 TV gave it a 60/100? everybody else so far rated it 85-90. what a bunch of turds. if this game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, they would have praised the hell out of it and given it a 95.

[stockstar1138]

Originally Posted by heathward

did you guys see that G4 TV gave it a 60/100? everybody else so far rated it 85-90. what a bunch of turds. if this game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, they would have praised the hell out of it and given it a 95.

only way thats fair, is if they gave 2k8 a 4/100.

I'm guessing they docked it hard for the online.

Edit: Nope, just read the review for both 2k8 (80/100) and The Show. Could these A-clowns be any more biased? I mean if you are going to be in bed with MS at least be discrete about it.

[Copywriter]

Originally Posted by heathward

did you guys see that G4 TV gave it a 60/100? everybody else so far rated it 85-90. what a bunch of turds. if this game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, they would have praised the hell out of it and given it a 95.

Nothing like having reviews done by a bunch of closet FPS-only players.