MLB 09: The Show

by George Jones
April 06, 2009 00:00 AM PST

I once had a chance to hang out with Nomar Garciappara for about 3 hours. It was one of those rare moments in life. I was living in Boston and my girlfriend (at the time) and I were hanging out at a T.G.I. Friday's on Exeter Street with some of her friends. Nomar walks in with a few other guys - I think they were also Sox players, but I'm not sure - and my girlfriend's friend Andrea went nuts. Andrea was smoking hot and kind of slutty. I think it was in her eyes. Anyway, she caught Nomar's eye and within minutes the future All-Star had ditched his friends and was hanging out at our table.

Whoa, this review is starting off on a rather interesting and salacious tangent. But Nomar's exploits aside, George's point is that MLB 09 is both realistic and fun. I've been playing the game non-stop as well and the attention to detail is amazing-the developers really nailed the fundamentals and mechanics of baseball. But the best part is that it manages to remain accessible to even a slap-happy idiot like me. Now, if I could just stop chasing fastballs out of the zone, I might be able to get out of the minors and earn my ticket to the Show.

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So it's me, Nomar, and three girls, one of whom is my girlfriend. As we continue partying, I'm watching it slowly dawn on this guy that he's about to take both of my girlfriend's 22 year-old friends home and well, you know. And he did.

But while we were making the small talk necessary to justify Nomar's epic slay, I got to talk baseball with Mr. Garciappara. At that time, he had just come into the organization. He was a rising star. I think he was playing third base back then. I remember thinking he would become one of the best pure right-handed hitters of all time. We started talking about hitting and I was startled at the simplicity with which Nomar described his approach to each at-bat. He was incredibly straightforward. Something along the lines of, "I step into the batter's box and look for a fastball to hit. If I don't get that, I just try to make good contact on the ball with my bat." When I started asking him questions about pitchers and locations and zones and probabilities, he insisted on simplicity. He said that as complicated as people make hitting, it's ultimately a simple act-see the ball, hit the ball.

So why do video games make it so complicated?

Whenever I play baseball video games I always find myself going back to this conversation. So many games make hitting such a complicated affair. Red hot zones. Blue cold zones. Scouting reports, percentages, swing sticks and all other manner of fancy newfangled gizmos. Jeez, whatever happened to just stepping up to the plate and taking your hacks?

The fact that MLB 09 The Show makes hitting so fantastically enjoyable is the first sign that this is not just an enjoyable game, but a truly great one. I would even go so far as to say that it's one of if not the best baseball games in the history of baseball games.

The hitting is great. Your player steps into the box and you take your hacks: it's not much more complicated than that. When you see a pitch you like, you simply press the X button on your PS3 controller. I love that you don't have to use a swing stick which I always felt was overly complicated and contradictory to the reactive nature of seeing a thrown ball and hitting it.

Even greater is the way MLB 09 The Show models bat-on-ball contact. When you are ahead in the count you tend to pull the ball, but when you're behind 0-2 or 1-2 you'll find yourself instinctively slowing your reaction time down enough that you foul the ball off or push the ball into the opposite field. That's a good thing.

And when you connect with the ball the contact feels great and the ball jumps off your bat in a realistic manner. This is also where the developers really leveraged the power of Blu-ray's immense storage capacity: The lack of repetition in character animations and on-field results is so low here when compared to MLB 2K9 that I almost feel embarrassed for the 2K game.

An improved base-running control scheme makes playing offense feel even more realistic and controllable. But ultimately, the simplicity of the controls-X button for normal swing, Square button for power swing, Circle button for bunts-rules the day. Check out the demo if you want to see what I'm talking about. The moment you have your first 13 pitch at-bat you'll see my point.

How about hurling the rock?

Then there's the other half of the baseball equation, pitching. The pitching interface is similarly realistic but it's also a relatively simple affair. If you take the mound, the catcher calls the pitch type and the location (you can turn the option off if you want). Once you select your pitch, you work the now-traditional three-click pitch meter to toss the ball towards the plate. Click once to start the meter, click twice to select the intensity of the pitch and click the third time to finish the pitching motion.

Perfect execution will typically succeed, but not always. This is one of the other admirable traits of MLB 09 The Show. As a pitcher you can do everything right but just as in life, sometimes the pitch just doesn't work out as you hope or plan. I've never pitched, but I would imagine that at some frustrating moments, you just can't hit the strike zone. This game models this in a way that doesn't feel unfair or crazy. I feel like I've watched enough baffled pitchers in my life, including a completely stymied San Francisco Giants bullpen in games six and seven of the 2002 World Series that I know what I'm talking about.

Like previous years, the career mode allows you to manage every aspect of your team's rosters, strategies, and on-field performance at the major and minor league levels. Gamers who've made the The Show series a yearly purchase will appreciate that the fast-play mode is further refined here. This mode allows you to cut to the chase when hitting and pitching by cutting out the walk-to-the-plate and other animations. It's essential because it allows you to play complete 9-inning contest in about 40 minutes.