MLB 16 The Show

When athletes talk about the process of making a crucial play, they often allude to things moving in slow motion as the big moment happens. In MLB The Show 16, SCE San Diego allows you to replicate that feeling with ShowTime, a new mechanic that slows time during big junctures.

ShowTime affects modes where you control a single player like Road to the Show, kicking in automatically during plays that require lightning-fast reflexes. It also pops up during routine throws, making you use the right stick to guide the cursor to the target.

If you want to go back to the way previous games play, you can disable ShowTime in the menus. Batters can also slow down one pitch per game, while pitchers can do it during a small handful of pitches each game. In Road to the Show, you can equip perks to give bonuses like making your opponents perform more errors or guaranteeing that pitches you face are in the strike zone. These perks unlock based on your player’s ratings. Equipping perks reduces your on-demand ShowTime, so these bonuses come at a cost.

Road to the Show now kicks off with a new scouting day that affects your player’s draft stock based on your performance. Fans of franchise mode have new GM goals to complete in order to move up to a bigger market or avoid getting fired, as well as more accurate player ratings using the 20–80 scale real scouts use to evaluate players.

Individual morale now plays a part in how a player performs in franchise, with factors like role, contract, region, and performance contributing to their happiness. If a star player is unhappy, not only are they unlikely to re-sign, but it can also hinder performance.

The Diamond Dynasty player card collection mode is adding challenges that reward you for using a diverse range of your cards. Dynamic card ratings are based on real-life player performance and different cards represent rookie and prime versions of players.

Diamond Dynasty is also implementing two new modes: Conquest and Battle Royale. Conquest is a single-player turn-based strategy mode designed to let you play Diamond Dynasty without having to compete online. It tasks you with expanding your team’s fan base across a massive gridded map of the United States, while encroaching on the territories of A.I. teams. In order to gain more fans and spread your influence, you must defeat rival teams. Battle Royale lets you draft a competitive team of players to compete in an online tournament. Through Battle Royale, you can earn some of the best cards in the game.

Those who had difficulty hitting in past entries will appreciate the new batting camera and increased ball size, which helps with perception of pitch speed, location, and break. In my time batting, I noticed an increase in my ability to differentiate balls and strikes.

Annualized sports games are constantly criticized for not making sweeping changes to justify the purchase every year. With new gameplay and a bevy of new modes, the developers behind MLB The Show 16 appear determined to make their game feel like more than just a roster update.

When you attend a game of baseball in MLB The Show 16, you’re not just going for the peanuts, Cracker Jack, or thrill of seeing a batter demolish a searing 97-mph fastball; you’re going to watch a player disprove Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Thanks to a new ability called “Showtime,” used exclusively in any player-lock mode like Road to the Show, the fabric of reality can unravel at any given time in The Show 16, gifting your player with the god-like ability to slow time to a crawl. With Showtime active, that 97-mph fastball ends up looking like a lazy balloon floating to the plate.

For a series that I applaud annually for getting baseball’s smallest details right, The Show now appears to have its sights set on mimicking popular video game conventions. Last year, players could wear gear to artificially reward ability bumps. This year, the Showtime mechanic smacks of a mutant gene from a superhero game.

While I like the spectacle of Showtime, such as seeing my fielder dive for a ball in super slow motion, it’s more of a misrepresentation of the sport than anything. It feels cheap. Showtime doesn’t guarantee success, but there’s obviously less of a chance of a strike out, error, or poorly struck ball. Although a limited resource, it is cheating in the most video game way possible.

Road to the Show also stumbles mightily with its Showtime-based perk system that guarantees outcomes like flyballs or all pitches being in the strike zone. Couple these additions with the returning trading-card system, and suddenly, skill doesn’t matter that much anymore. This year’s takeaway: Build your baseball Iron Man, select his powers, and you’ll make it to the big leagues in no time.

Diamond Dynasty, Sony’s online-focused mode in which you are tasked to create a fictional team and build its roster through collectible player cards, has received a fair number of notable additions this year. This is where I ended up spending most of my time, willingly, and having a good time doing so. For the first time in The Show history, Diamond Dynasty is the mode I recommend players invest their time in. Through the new avenues of play, I was pleased to find I was earning new cards left and right, and I could fly through match-ups almost as quickly as a player-locked game.

Diamond Dynasty’s biggest hooks come in unconventional baseball ways. The first is Conquest mode, a grid-based battle across the United States in which every MLB baseball team — and your fictional one — vie for territorial control. The second way is Battle Royale, a mode that offers a revolving door of competition with nice rewards... if you can afford it. You have to pay 1,500 studs — the in-game currency — to compete in Battle Royale each time. It’s a pay-to-play mode.

Battle Royale mode is the most fun I’ve had battling other players in The Show, but the net code behind it isn’t as reliable as it should be, a problem this series has struggled with since venturing online. Some games were loaded with lag and strange fielding freezes. Instances like this are unacceptable in short, three-inning games that are usually decided by one run. Stat junkies are going to love this year’s Franchise mode. Almost every little statistic you can think of — including wins above replacement — is tracked. Managing an organization is a little more complex this year, as the trade logic for rival GMs is much improved, budgets can be tricky to stay on top of, and you have to factor in player morale for everything including free-agent signings. Star players bring many demands, and if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, they’ll play angry and affect the outcomes of the club. A bit more babysitting is required for Franchise mode, but I did feel like a GM with my hand in everything.

I harped on The Show last year for its lack of new experiences, and Sony answered that call with two big additions to Diamond Dynasty. They don’t scream of America’s Greatest Pastime in any capacity — mascot races make more sense — but they are welcome diversions that prop up The Show’s excellent on-the-field play, which still fits like a well-worn glove. The series is moving away from being an authentic baseball simulation, but for longtime players, these pie-in-the-sky ideas are just what this baseball series needs.

You may call me captain obvious when I say that MLB 16 The Show is a good game if you like baseball, but there is no other simpler way to describe what this game is all about. If you like this series, you will like this, it is as simple as that. I feel like Sony started to release the same game for several years and that feeling continued for a few entries after this one. Still, it plays a damn fine game of baseball and this year's installment did add in a few new modes which did help make this stand out a little bit from what came the few years prior to this.

Opening Day!

I have to start by talking about the presentation of MLB 16 The Show which is fantastic! They manage to capture the look and feel of an MLB broadcast pretty much perfectly. Granted, you could take MLB 15 The Show and the following years, MLB 17 The Show that sandwich this game and not be able to tell much of a difference. However, there is no denying that they nail the TV style presentation with this. The camera does feel a bit more dynamic here which I had fun playing with. At the end of the day, this is about as authentic as can be when it comes to being just like what you see on TV.

Let’s Play Ball

MLB 16 The Show is a fun game of baseball. What I like about this series is that this is most certainly a sim style of game, but it is so easy to pick up and play. Both batting and pitching are very easy to figure out and your guys on the field do feel quite smart and never have you getting too mad at them. You have t=your standard modes that fans of the series will be used to such as Road to the Show. The franchise mode is awesome if you want to take your favorite team all the way to the top. In all, there is a lot here to keep you busy, but most importantly, this is a very highly polished game of baseball that is fun no matter how big or casual a fan of the sport you are. The multiplayer is also a whole lot of fun, they added a new kind of battle royal mode this year which I know many hardcore fans got pretty addicted to.

A Real Conquest

For this year's game a new Conquest Mode was added that is part of the Franchise Mode. MLB 16 The Show if you ask me does stand out from what came before it thanks to this mode. In this mode, you have a map of the country that shows all 30 MLB teams and the idea is that each one is a territory, you want to claim all the territories, but to do this you have to beat the other teams and their fans. It is a fun and addictive mode and I give them a ton of props for doing this. It is a fantastic and super fun way to take your franchise mode team that you have built and try to have them take over the world of baseball.

Do I Need This In My Collection?

If you are a big fan of the series and baseball in general, MLB 16 The Show is well worth adding to your collection, even if later games do have more polish, new modes, and so on. I think that the conquest mode is a ton of fun and such a neat idea. However, I do also think that if you are a video game collector, you may want to consider adding this to your physical game collection. The reason that I say that is that this game was the last in the series to be released for the PlayStation 3 and that would make it a kind of fun collectible to have in your video game collection.

Pros:

• If you like baseball, there is no way you will not like this
• The TV style presentation is fantastic
• Conquest Mode is very addictive and a lot of fun
• This is the premier baseball series for a reason

Cons:

• At the end of the day, there are at least 6 titles that all feel, look, and play the same
• Some of the repeated commentary lines can get annoying