MLB The Show 21 - Review
MLB The Show is an iconic franchise for the PlayStation console and could arguably be considered a system seller for Sony in the home of baseball, the good old US of A due to it being a PlayStation exclusive for more than a decade. Ever since 2K sports discontinued their MLB 2K franchise after the release of MLB 2K13 owners of Xbox consoles have been left without a serious baseball game and have had to rely on getting their baseball thrills from more arcade like offerings such as the RBI Baseball series. Well Xbox owners you can now sing hallelujah and sing your praises to the heavens as San Diego Studios for the first time ever have brought The Show franchise over to the Xbox platform and not only that the series also gets a Series X upgrade for its first appearance.
Whenever a game franchise moves over to the next generation of consoles players expectations skyrocket, sometimes to unrealistic levels and I find this is the case even more in sports games, if history shows us anything in the case of sports games franchises on consoles is that their first appearance on a next gen system is usually their weakest outing, and this is understandable due to the fact that developers have to get used to a whole new system and consoles usually take a good few years before developers get used to all of their ins and outs. That’s not to say that there are no notable improvements when it comes to The Show, but in some cases, it is more of a case of one step forward but then another step backwards.
Graphically the game looks fantastic on the PS5 and it runs in 4K at a fluid 60 FPS, the frame rate drops of previous versions of the game have all but disappeared and the higher frame rate in 4K makes gameplay a much, much smoother experience overall. That being said the textures and the players models are pretty much exactly the same as they have been for the past few versions so hopefully this is something San Diego Studios are looking to improve in the coming years now that they have a lot more horsepower to work with. The games menus last year were fantastic and one of the most graphically pleasing menu systems I have ever seen in a sports game, which is why I am scratching my head trying to understand why they decided to give the games menus an overhaul this year and unfortunately it is not for the better, the menus this year are bland, sluggish and very confusing, they look like something a first-year intern would design if they sat down with Unity for the first time and were told to design a menu.
One of the biggest and best additions this year is one fans have been crying out for and that is the ability to create your own stadium. This mode is only available on next gen consoles but the toolset here is really impressive and varied. You can basically choose from a bunch of templates or decide to start with a blank slate and design a park to your hearts content, from some of the creations I have seen online you can really design something amazing here if you decide to put the time in and the best part of it is that you can use your created stadium in online games against other people, knowing I could show off my creations to other people gave me even more incentive to spend time in this mode designing something I was proud of. This is a great example of when a developer listens to their player base and gets it right!
The games commentary hasn’t seen much improvement over the past few years and the commentary team of Matt Vasgersian, Mark DeRosa and Dan Plesac are getting a bit long in the tooth, this has been one of my biggest gripes with the game over the past few years and I am really hoping they have a plan to put together a new commentary team over the next few years, it’s not that the commentary team is bad by any stretch of the imagination but when you have been listening Vasgersian repeat the same lines over and over again for the past 10 years it does become a bit tiring. On a positive note, the soundtrack is fantastic, and I give mad props to whoever decided to include Onyx’s “Slam” in the musical collection. SLAM!! Da der da Da Der da, LET THE BOYS BE BOYS!! Likewise, the games sound effects really help to create the kind of atmosphere you would expect from a major league ballpark.
One of the biggest changes to the game this year comes with the Road To The Show mode, for those who haven’t played the game before this is a mode where you create a player and tell his story by making your way from the minor leagues all the way up to the majors, improving your stats along the way. This year is the first year you can play as a 2-way player, for those uninitiated this is a player who both pitches and bats and it certainly does add a lot more depth to the type of player you can create in the mode. In years past you would create your player and start off in a couple of showcase games against other budding players from around the baseball world, how well you would perform in these games would determine how high you would be picked in the draft, unfortunately this part of RTTS has been removed and now you basically just create your player and answer a couple of questions from your agent as to whether you would like to be drafted by a random team or pick the team you are drafted to and then you watch some FMV and that’s it, you are in the minor leagues. It is a bit disappointing that they have decided to remove the showcase from this mode, and I really don’t see any reason why they would cut things from RTTS when players have been screaming for improvements to this mode for years.
Speaking of things that have been cut, they have also cut the little mini-interactions you would have with your team mates in between games like they had in MLB The Show 20, now the only way you can build up relationships with your team mates is by performing on the baseball field. There are some improvements in RTTS though and one of them comes through the new “archetype system”, in years past you would pick an archetype during player creation and then basically be stuck with it through your players career, in MLB The Show 21 you can pick an archetype and level it up by playing games and if at any time you decide you don’t like it, for instance you decide you want to be a speedy base runner rather than a big and heavy slugger, then you can change your archetype and start levelling a new one up. The best thing is that progression through various archetypes in both single and multi-player modes will count towards your experience in Diamond Dynasty seasons and you will unlock rewards from this program from even playing offline games against the CPU. I did find that RTTS does feel like it is trying to funnel you into playing Diamond Dynasty (The Shows Online mode, think Madden Ultimate Team, but way better) and I can see this being an unpopular move with players who have been screaming for more offline content for years now.
I used to be strictly an offline player in regards to The Show however this year I decided I was going to have a big go at the games online mode Diamond Dynasty, and I am glad that I did. Thanks to a lot of improvements this year Diamond Dynasty is really where the meat of the game lies. For players new to The Show, Diamond Dynasty is the games take on the tried-and-true formula of collecting cards, using these player cards to build a team and then taking that team through challenges and online play to win rewards and ranks. There are multiple reasons why this mode works in the show whereas it fails in other games (Think Madden Ultimate Team or any other sports game made by EA really) and that’s because whilst in other games this sort of thing comes off as a blatant cash grab which drives you into the PlayStation store to purchase virtual cash with real money, The Show doesn’t do that. The Show provides you with multiple opportunities to earn stubs (the in-game cash system) and cards themselves by simply completing offline challenges or by competing with others in online games, there is so much to do in this mode and so many programs to complete for rewards that it’s actually overwhelming here, in a good way, If you haven’t played this mode before I would recommend heading to YouTube and watching a few videos first for advice on how to get the most worth out of your time. I went from having 25,000 stubs and a team of bronze players on launch day and within a week I now have a full team of diamond players and 250,000 stubs to spare, and I have only played 5 online games in the process.
Diamond Dynasty makes it so easy to earn stubs and cards through single player challenges and even through collecting and flipping cards on the market itself (I got waaaaaaay to invested into doing this that I think I have an addiction to virtual currency) that unlike EA’s take on this mode you never feel pressured to spend real money to have the best team, if you have been wary of this mode in the past, don’t be, give it a crack! Unfortunately, with praise usually comes criticism and it is no different here. It has been really hard to play through challenges and online games during the launch week as the servers have been absolutely atrocious, to the point that you might see hours of work go down the drain if the servers decide to implode and trust me, they do decide to implode, regularly! Sure this is the first year the game is on Xbox with cross platform play with the PS5 so San Diego Studios do deserve a little bit of a pass here but there is really no excuse for the servers to be so utterly terrible.
If you curb the expectations that come with a games first edition on a next gen console then MLB The Show 21 is a solid baseball game, especially when the servers are behaving. There will be a fair bit of outcry from players that only play offline modes such as franchise and RTTS, and rightfully so, as these modes have either had features removed from them or in the case of franchise mode have not seen many improvements at all, people have been crying for online franchises for years but this seems to fall on deaf ears where San Diego Studios are concerned. I do encourage people to give Diamond Dynasty a go though as it is not the evil crash grab that it is portrayed out to be, there is just so much to do in this mode and online play and matching up your team of players against somebody else is an incredible amount of fun. For everything removed from the game there have been a lot of great new additions such as the excellent new pin-point pitching control system, the ability to level up your cards just by playing with them in your team (online or offline), playing as a two-way player and of course being able to take your created player into DD mode. The formula may be getting tired and a bit worn out here but San Diego Studios seem to add just enough to the game each year to make it a must buy each year, especially for baseball fans, rather than just a simple roster update.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
+Create a Stadium mode
+Pinpoint pitching system feels fantastic
+Card Parallel levelling system
+Tons of content in Diamond Dynasty
The Cons
-Unforgiveable server issues during launch week
-Franchise mode and RTTS seem to be lagging behind the attention being paid to Diamond Dynasty mode
-RTTS mode has bugs that can stop your player from progressing
-Commentary really needs an overhaul
