Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Worth playing"

Quick Review:

Pros:
- Graphics look really good
- Realistic baseball experience
- RTTS can be surprisingly addictive
- Customizable soundtrack

Cons:
- Minuscule but noticeable graphical glitches
- Relentless opponent A.I.
- Unforgiving RTTS goals at times
- Controls can at times, switch, and do things you never intended to do

In-depth review:
MLB 10 The Show is this year's baseball tribute from Sony, personally, this is the first baseball game i've played since Triple Play 2002 on Playstation 2 so I will admit it's been quite a while since i've played baseball anywhere. As you can imagine from an 8 year absence from baseball games, I didn't quite know what I would be in for but after playing it, despite the problems i've had with it, i'm still coming back to play it so it has to be pretty good, right? So let's go in depth to this game, unless you just checked out my quick review area, then this is going to seem like a waste of text.

Game play:
There really isn't much to say here, it's baseball! You hit the ball when you're on offense and try and catch the ball when you're on defense. As for game modes, you have your staples in baseball games with quick match and Season mode, but you also have the "Road to the Show" feature which is similar to Season mode, but rather than follow one team for a season, you make a character and build him up throughout his career from AA to AAA and all the way up to the majors. Now as it says in my quick review area, this mode can be surprisingly addicting due to you can set it so that you only see the plays that your created player is involved in, so games can take between 5-20 minutes. Now don't be alarmed when you see a play and the ball gets nowhere near you because there was a possibility that it could have, so you do always have to be on your toes.

Now the way you increase your player's stats is one of two ways, first, by training sessions, these occur randomly and their benefits help in the beginning, but around your 4th or 5th year, they can become redundant. Secondly, you can increase your stats through good play such as hitting home runs or hitting 3-4 in a game or even completing goals set by your team's manager. Now if you play well, you'll be rolling in training points but if you play badly, they can actually penalize your training point gain by completing certain bad conditions, such as hitting into a double play. Now these penalties don't affect your overall stats, they only affect your points earned in that game, but it can become quite annoying when you have a goal such as "Drive the Run Home", you hit into a double play, and now you're looking at -15 points at the end of the game. Which brings me to a point I made in the quick review area, at times where you literally have no control over the outcome, you will still get penalized. The most frequent problem with this that I have run into is the old "Hit an Run" goal. Whenever I get this goal, either one of four things happens. One, the pitch is nowhere near hittable and you get penalized for a "not attempted". Two, I hit it but it goes foul, and I get penalized for failing. Three, I hit it deep, the outfielder catches it and I get penalized for failing. And four, I hit it and everything turns out ok, but this instance occurs rarely.

Also, I have to bring this up, at times the A.I. of the other team seems like a group of all stars, even on the lowest difficulty setting. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have three batters in a row hit the ball in the same spot, eventually taking your team's 4-0 lead into a 6-4 embarrassment. Then there's the matter of the controls. Now the way I had my controls set up for base running was that backward on the left stick meant to go back to the base I was initially at, but at times, notably when i'm on 2nd base, this will reverse. I have no idea how or why this occurs but it can get annoying at times. Also, there's times where my character in RTTS is taking a bit of a lead, I hold back on the left stick to lean back towards the base and my character all of a sudden takes off toward the next base, which can get really annoying when your manager bites your ear off for it, but I didn't want to do that so what more is expected of me? Anyway, that's really all I have to say about the game play.

Graphics:
For the most part, the graphics are awesome, they really do look like they belong to a next gen console. The only problem I have with the graphics is that at times, they mess up. They're rare but they do occur, for example, sometimes during RTTS, if you have your character's pants set to baggy, they'll juggle back and forth from baggy to short. Which as I said in the quick review area, is minuscule, as it has literally no affect on the game play, but unfortunately it is noticeable so I did have to bring it up.

Sound:
The sound in this game is great, the audio sounds exactly how you would expect a baseball game to sound, with not only the sound of a bat hitting the ball but also the crowd and the umpire's, it sounds like you're actually at a baseball game. Then there's the announce team, which for the most part is also great, but there is a few issues I have with it. Firstly, at times their speech can jump, an example of this is when one of the announcers says, "This batter is 0 for, 0 for 4 today" which is very minor, but can take away from the immersion. Secondly, at times you just want to rip their vocal cords out, not only for the reason that they can get annoying at times, but just the things they say can sound so negative that you wonder how that even made it out from the testing stage. When you hear one of the announcers say, "The good news is that this guy is a DEFINITE double play candidate," when you're up to bat, you can't help but think, "Wha?...Thanks for the confidence you dick!" But again, these issues are very minor and can be overlooked. Also, this game has the ability where you can add your own songs to the in-game playlist, which is great where in the event that you didn't find any of the in-game music enjoyable (like me,) you can just add your own, so that's a definite plus.

Replayability/Longevity:
If you are a baseball fan, it honestly doesn't matter what I type here, you're going to be playing this for quite a while. If you're not a fan of sports games, you'll still have a good time with this game, but you may only play it for a week, if that, so i'd recommend it as a rental for you.

Summary:
So overall, this game is pretty good but it's not without it's faults, again, the biggest problem is with the controls temporarily not doing what they're supposed to do, but they don't occur that often so they don't overly hinder the game play. But when you look at this game, overall it is quite adequate and if you're a fan of sports games with a PS3, you're not going to want to miss this one. Alternatively for you non-sports gamers, just rent it, and you'll have a great time.