MLB 09: The Show Review (PS3): A Great Baseball Video Game

MLB 09: The Show is a video game released for the Playstation 3 and developed by SCEA San Diego Studios. Baseball games enjoyed a huge boost in popularity some time ago, but they waned quite quickly. Still, there's few things I like more that pitching a few knuckle balls in the digital world. Let's take a look at MLB 98: The Show.

Story : No story here, it's just a baseball game.

Graphics : The atmosphere in this game is really quite amazing. You actually feel like you're at the ball park. The details in the players, the crowd, and especially the field, are all amazing. By far the best graphics I've seen in a baseball game. The menus are very sleek and intuitive and there's a lot of small touches that really bring the game to life.

Sound : The sound of a baseball game is just as important as the look. SCEA San Diego Studios delivers here as well, giving the park announcer, crowd, cracking bats, and pretty much every baseball sound equal attention. You can pretty much close your eyes and be fooled into thinking you're watching a baseball game on television, which is quite the feat when you think about it.

Game play : There's quite a few things to go over here. The pitching system is pretty simple, perhaps a bit too simple. Also the fact that you see graphically just how your pitches will do takes away from the mystery of the game. The hitting, likewise, there's far too much information and options displayed on screen. I realize they wanted to give you a huge variety of new things with many customizable options, but there is such a thing as going too far. Fielding is just about on par with fielding in every other game, as in it could use some work. Let's be real though, fielding is very hard to get right and it may be years before somebody does. There seems to be far too many errors in this game, as in the errors that happen in a real baseball game. I realize errors are common, but not quite this common in the big leagues. Base running is simple and works great.

Re playability : The on line function for this game is, I'm really sorry, total trash. It's not the fault of the creators or developers though, the game just suffers from lag. Any game that's so timing based will suffer a lot when lag happens, and unfortunately this game is loaded with it. If you like playing on line, then find a different game.

Overall : 8/10. A generous score, considering you can't really play it online. The game is still quite good and is one of the best baseball games out there, so check it out but don't expect on line play.