MLB The Show 22 - Review
Last year I started off my review off MLB The Show 21 by stating how surprised I was that Sony was releasing one of its most beloved exclusive franchises for the Xbox, imagine my surprise this year when I found out that the Show is now also being released on the Nintendo Switch! Does this also mean that Sony and San Diego Studios have also been listening to the ever-growing chorus of PC Master Race fanbois and we might possibly see the series make its debut on the PC next year? I guess only time will tell. The move over to the Switch actually makes complete sense where MLB The Show is concerned as it is the perfect game to pick up and play when you are on the go, especially with the myriad of quick pick up and play challenges available in Diamond Dynasty mode, it may even make the morning journey to work travelling, become a somewhat pleasant experience. Having been mainly a franchise and Road to the Show player in previous incarnations of The Show, last year was the year I decided to give online a good solid go, due to actually coming to terms with the fact that unfortunately Franchise was pretty much a dying part of the game when it came to improvements and developments, and I am actually glad to say that I took the plunge as it completely re-invigorated the love I have for this franchise. Enough waffling on about my experience with last year’s game though, MLB The Show 22 is finally here and as is usual for a yearly sports franchise it brings along a bad of new tricks with it, will San Diego Studios hit one out of the park or will The Show 22 ground out into a double play?
On the PlayStation 5 graphically the game looks amazing, from the players and animations, the uniforms through to the stadiums everything looks outstanding, and it all runs buttery smooth, I didn’t notice a single slow down or dropped frame in the 50+ hours I spent with the game. The sounds and the atmosphere of the stadium is also right on point, music plays when batters walk up to the plate, suitable sound effects play when a batter strikes out or someone steals a base, fans audibly sigh when a batter strikes out, they boo when an umpire misses a call, if you closed your eyes and just listened to the game you could easily be fooled into thinking you were at a real ball park.
Last year I touched on how the commentary team and presentation of the game had gotten a bit long in the tooth over the years, don’t get me wrong Matt Vasgersian has done an absolutely stellar job in his time as a sportscaster on The Show but I have been listening to his voice for the last decade and that’s probably long enough to drive anybody insane. Thankfully this year we have been blessed with a new presentation package and commentary team. The team have done a really good job overhauling the presentation from the overlays introducing the teams that show at the start of every game through to the player highlights that happen between plays, even the new authentic camera angles and new interactive fan cam are a sight to behold, MLB The Show looks and feels like a real baseball broadcast. The new commentary team this year consists of Jon ‘Boog’ Sciambi and Chris Singleton who are known for being major league commentators for both the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox, they work extremely well together and it shines through in the commentary they deliver in MLB The Show, Sciambi’s deep gravelly voice is perfect for narrating a baseball game and Singleton complements him well by chiming in with interesting facts about the players and the history of baseball, thanks to the conversation blending system if an explosive play interrupts one of the commentators in the middle of delivering an interesting anecdote the commentator will go straight back to telling his story after the play is over, the commentary is sparse at times and is a testament to the old saying that “less is more” as the ebbs and flow in the commentary allow the stadium sounds and atmosphere to shine through in the places in the game that it needs to. The lines that Sciambi and Singleton deliver do unfortunately get repetitive after a while but that can be forgiven as this is their first year in the booth, San Diego Studios have a great commentary duo here and I can’t wait to see how these guys sound in a few years when they have a lot more voice lines recorded.
I guess it’s time to address the elephant in the room, franchise mode. Year after year, fans of the game - myself included have been screaming for improvements to be made to this game mode and it always seems to fall on deaf ears. I am sad to report that this year franchise mode is pretty much the same as last years game, except for the new presentation package, some improvements to trade logic and also a more accurate representation of two way players this mode remains largely untouched. I was always a franchise and Road to the Show mode player primarily in The Show but after playing a lot of Diamond Dynasty last year and having a blast with it, I came to the revelation, and it might not be a popular one, that franchise mode as we used to know it in sports games is dead and the sooner that people stop clinging on to it hoping for major improvements to be delivered for it and start dipping their toes into the waters of Diamond Dynasty the better they will be for it. I get that people have concerns that most of these multi player modes in sports games are money sinks and in some cases that way of thinking is justified but in MLB The Show this is just not the case, the only thing you need to invest in order to be successful is time. For instance last year I ended up with every player on my team being a 99 overall diamond and having more than a million stubs left in my bank, and this was achieved without spending a single cent on the game. The future of The Show is the Diamond Dynasty mode, this may be a hard pill for some people to swallow but there is no better time than now to embrace this mode (especially with the introduction of the new single player mini seasons mode) rather than getting frustrated with the lack of improvements to franchise mode.
Diamond Dynasty is quite unashamedly the main game mode when it comes to The Show these days and is the mode that sees the most improvements every year, and I don’t necessarily see that as such a bad thing. For the uninitiated Diamond Dynasty mode is both an online and offline game mode that sees you partaking in various challenges and online games in order to earn card packs, specific cards or even stubs in order to buy the aforementioned packs or particular player cards, you then use these cards to build your own fantasy baseball team and then sort out their batting order and even pitching rotation. For myself I get a lot of satisfaction from grinding out challenges in order to collect cards and then taking my team online and seeing how they perform against other players. Diamond dynasty mode is constantly updated through the year as San Diego Studios slowly add better rated player cards to the game, they also add various player programs throughout the year to ensure that there are always new rewards to work for and a multiple of ways to achieve your goals. The main addition to Diamond Dynasty this year is ‘mini seasons’ this is a strictly single player mode where you will take your team and challenge other fictional teams that consist of other actual real players lineups, the games are also mini in size being that they are 3 inning games so this is the perfect mode to just pick up and play when you have limited free time. The best thing about mini seasons is that while you are playing this single player mode you will still earn XP towards the currently active player programs in the game and the cards you have equipped on your team will also earn experience towards player parallel levels so you would be hard pushed to say that your time isn’t valued here, especially with the caliber of the rewards available for getting through a whole mini season and winning the championship.
Mini seasons is the perfect way for someone who is hesitant about dipping their toes into the world of Diamond Dynasty to take the plunge, I can almost guarantee you that once you win a few games and start collecting some cards that you will start to really care about your team and its identity and will probably then sit in the logo and uniform creator for the next 6 hours creating a brand for your team, don’t even get me started on the stadium creator as it is also so easy to while away hours designing a field and the various concession stands and even the buildings that surround your stadium. The other big change to Diamond Dynasty is the addition of what San Diego Studios are calling ‘supercharged players’ – A player card will become supercharged when the actual real life player has an outstanding game in real life thus turning a card that may be a 60 overall into one that is 90+ overall, the only downside being that the supercharge status is removed after 48 hours so you only have a limited time to obtain the cards and add them to your squad, this is a fantastic addition to the game and ensures that other players teams will be more diversified than last year where at times it seemed that you were playing the exact same lineups of whatever cards were deemed to be the meta over and over again.
Of course if you don’t like grinding away hours of your time in order to complete challenges and gain EXP so you can obtain the cards you want you can spend real life money to buy stubs in order to simply buy packs of cards or straight up buy the player you want from somebody else on the games marketplace, before you start to scream ‘pay to win’ though The Show is far from it, the game practically throws rewards at you regardless of whether you play single player or multi-player modes, besides some of the rarer cards cannot even be obtained by throwing money at the game, you have to earn them. Over the past few years as far as I am concerned Diamond Dynasty has gone from being the monster in the corner that was killing off franchise mode to the main game mode I play and look forward to each year, give it a shot I can almost promise you won’t be disappointed.
March to October also returns this year with the new addition of being able to play multiple seasons with your team rather than just the single season in past editions, the offseason has also been revamped to include a free agency system. The games presentation really shines during March to October as having a game mode where you are only dropped into key moments in certain games is the perfect platform for the new presentation and stats packages to shine as they tell you the story of what has been happening up until the moment you enter the game. Road to the Show is also back this year, for new players to the game this serves as The Shows ‘my career’ or ‘my player’ mode that most other sports related games have. There haven’t been many major additions to the mode this year apart from the ability to create multiple ball players and also extra added player archetypes and perks, they even brought back the ability to pitch as a knuckleballer though unfortunately if you create a knuckler you won’t be able to use your created player in your Diamond Dynasty team. Compared to other games like the NBA 2K series the game really doesn’t give you that much of a narrative driven story to play through, especially after the first year where a lot of the story seems to drop off completely apart from some sparse voice clips from fictional podcasts.
Road to the Show delivers it story through a series of MLB network video clips with various baseball greats talking about your player and their performance, I find this approach to be just ok, it is nothing special and is pretty much a ‘one and done’ as I can guarantee you will skip these when it comes to creating your second or third ball player, there are better approaches to delivering a narrative for your player and even continuing that narrative through multiple seasons by adding RPG elements like 2K sports in the NBA series, San Diego Studios have some work to do here. Thankfully the actual game mode is great, I always create a pitcher as my player and it is always fun seeing your player going from a noodle arm home run machine and building them up to be a 100mph flamethrower that can dot the plate right on the corner, Road to the Show is also one of the most efficient ways of earning EXP in the game so it will benefit you greatly to at least play through a few seasons worth of it, you can also use your created player on your Diamond Dynasty team, though this tends to be frowned on by a lot of the player base as it is possible to create pitchers that are next to impossible to hit especially if you change their delivery to be submarine, personally I really don’t care what the player base think, if it’s in the game it’s in the game and I am going to use it to my advantage.
San Diego Studios have once again delivered another completely credible version of The Show this year and have proven that they have listened to the community especially when it comes to things like pinpoint pitching accuracy and pitcher stamina as both of these areas of the game have been slightly nerfed as they proved to be a bit overpowered last year. ‘BUT WHAT ABOUT ONLINE SEASONS’ I hear you scream as you do…over….and…..over in…every…single….twitch…broadcast that San Diego Studios deliver, to be brutal I think you have to get over it, I really doubt it is coming back, it would be prohibitively expensive to implement back into the game and I seriously doubt it would be used by the majority of the player base, if most people won’t use it then it is not getting added back into the game. As I mentioned earlier it really feels like Diamond Dynasty is now the games main mode, with the addition of mini seasons San Diego Studios have really given players the perfect launching point to get their Diamond Dynasty team started which will hopefully see more players start to explore all the features this mode has to offer.
MLB The Show 22 is a technically sound baseball game that offers hundreds of hours’ worth of entertainment as long as you are prepared to give Diamond Dynasty mode a shot, if you own last years game and absolutely refuse to dip your toes into Diamond Dynasty though then there probably isn’t much here to get excited about.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by PlayStation
The Pros
+Mini seasons mode is a great introduction to Diamond Dynasty
+New supercharged cards are a great new feature
+New commentary team is excellent as is the overall atmosphere at all MLB stadiums
+Hitting and pitching mechanics have been further refined from last year and feel much more fluid
+GUI looks a lot better than the very plain offerings last year and can now be navigated a lot more fluidly
The Cons
-Franchise mode is dead, this will turn off a lot of people not prepared to switch to Diamond Dynasty
-Bugs! There were quite a lot of bugs in the game at launch with one particularly bad one completely crashing the game every time I tried to back out of Diamond Dynasty Mode
-You will be well rewarded for the time you put into MLB the show, however the time requirements can be quite steep especially if you want to be considered competitive in Diamond Dynasty
