MLB The Show 19 Gameplay HR Derby Williams Jackson Thomas Mays Sano Gallo Judge Schmidt PS4 2021
3MLB The Show 19 Gameplay HR Derby Williams Jackson Thomas Mays Sano Gallo Judge Schmidt PS4 2021
#mlb #theshow #hrderby
What Forbes says
In the world of sports video games, stellar gameplay makes up for limitations in other areas. The MLB The Show series has been perhaps the best example of that within the genre.
I’ve been playing MLB The Show 19 for four days and I’ll reaffirm something I said last year, and have been saying for some time, this series offers the most realistic gameplay of any sports video game on the market. MLB The Show 18 was guilty of a few missteps in the area of fielding, and some slightly inconsistent results as it pertains to bat-on-ball physics. All that said, I still thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay.
MLB The Show 19 plays even better than the version I loved last year. There are thousands of new animations for fielders, and every piece of the action flows more smoothly than it ever has in the past. There aren’t a ton of new gameplay additions, which is fine, because from a structural standpoint there weren’t any issues to correct. It’s really hard to express just how good the game plays to someone who has yet to experience it for themselves.
This is why I’m cutting The Show a little less slack in some areas, but I’ll get to that in a second.
Graphically, the improvements aren’t eye-popping, but if you’ve played the series for years, you can see the slight upgrades. There are more players with accurate renders, such as the Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant, but others like the Chicago White Sox’s Jose Abreu are still inexplicably inaccurate. I didn’t see any pre-release coverage alluding to enhancements to player models, but the players look a little sharper. It’s probably more lighting and texture adjustments, but no matter the reason, I can see the improvement.
There some nice new modes making their series debut in The Show 19. March to October is a microwaved season mode with built-in challenges. It’s like a mixture between a simulation and the Critical Situations feature the series introduced a couple of years ago.
Every team in the majors is classified in one of four categories: favorites, contenders, underdogs or long shots. You can take control of any of them with the goal of guiding them to a World Series title. You don’t play all of the games. As a matter of fact, you only play parts of the games that you’re prompted to dive into at the key moments of the season.
Unlike Critical Situations and other simulation-based features, what you do in the key moments affects the results of the simulated games on your schedule. For example, you’re asked to win your Opening Day matchup after being dropped into a close game in the 6th inning. If you win, you’ll likely ignite a win streak, but if you lose, your team will go the other way.
Throughout the season, you’ll be prompted to play other moments. Some of them will be player-lock challenges, and others will be full team control. There’s a nice variety, so it doesn’t really get boring. One of my favorite things about MTO is that with the assistance of some handy graphics between games and new sideline reporter Heidi Watney, you don’t feel as though you’re less than informed about your journey.
Watney chimes in before and during games to tell the story of the season, and that helps with immersion. You can choose the difficulty and that determines the prize you’ll receive, which is related primarily to Diamond Dynasty. Once your season is done, you can roll it into a full-fledged franchise mode, which is nice.
The other big new feature is called Moments. This mode, which has even more direct ties to DD, puts you in the shoes of baseball legends like Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, or teams like the 2016 Chicago Cubs, and tasks you with reliving their most memorable moments.
Conceptually, I like this feature, but I didn’t get everything I wanted from the experience. There are some really nice DD rewards that come from completing these moments, and more will be added throughout the season. However, there wasn’t enough done from a presentation standpoint to transport me back to the time when some of the more iconic moments took place.
Yes, there is some nice real-life footage to help set the table for the experience, and there is a filter that has you play in black and white, but the rosters are generic and the fields aren’t retro. That might sound like a small thing, but if included, it could have put the Moments mode over the top.
As it is, it’s still a strong addition to The Show series and one I’m looking forward to being fleshed out moving forward.
I’ve talked a little about DD and some of the connections with other modes, but speaking specifically, the constant improvement of this mode from year to year has been stellar. We’re at a point where I believe it has become the best collector mode in the sports video game genre. More than 30 legends were added to this year’s game to augment the mode.