MLB 08: The Show
from: Sony Computer Entertainment
List Price: $59.99
Prices subject to change.
Your Price: $56.99
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Average Rating: 
Sales Rank: 801
Sales Rank: 801
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Video Games : MLB 08: The Show |
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Rating:  - * Almost perfect ... One of the problems with reviewing sports video games is, by the time you have played it enough to give a fair critique, the current season is over, and nobody (hard-core sports games addicts, anyway) wants to buy LAST years game version. However, after again playing through a full pre-season, regular 162 game season, and playoffs with my home-town Chicago White Sox (and winning it all, btw),here is my critique: I am concentrating only on the game as it pertains to those who buy sports games primarily to play through a full season with their favorite team, and are interested in not only fun, but realistic gameplay and believable statistics. I'll comment briefly on the Road To The Show,etc, but the below is mainly about playing a season mode. I play on the Hall of Fame (highest) difficulty level, against the CPU, and rarely if ever simulate a game completely. 1- Graphics and animations: Undeniably the best looking sports video game on the current market, bar none. The upgrade from MLB The Show 07 is striking: player models and movements are spot-on perfect, and really add a lot to the fun of the game. Tremendous number of individualized batting stances and pitching deliveries, and the number/variation of animations have been increased tremendously, so the gameplay never seems repetitive. I got some 60 games into the season and still was seeing some animations for the first time. This part of the game is A++++. 2- Sound: spot-on crowd and stadium sounds, and much more in concert with what is going on with the gameplay than previous versions. Crowds make a lot of noise in tight game situations, and get quiet when the home team is getting drubbed, and the boo-birds come out at appropriate times, too. The only sound aspect that hasn't improved much is the announcers- still rather droll and repetitive: not a game-breaker, but could be done much better than it is still. The NHL videogames are a good example of how good this can be, and how much it can add to the gameplay. 3- Rosters: always a concern for baseball afficionados- the early release of MLB 08 caused the rosters to be rather incomplete, but this can be edited easily enough, and regular on-line updates are also available. More minor leaguers with real names, too. Also nice that players are fairly editable, too, though some things you can't change, even if they are WRONG (ie: Nick Swisher throws right-handed in MLB 08, when in reality he is a lefty- but for some reason you can't change that). One other very annoying thing: you aren't allowed to have expanded rosters in September, for some reason- so you have to resort to shuffling players up and down between the MLB and minors, rather than having the 40 man roster at the end of the year as in real life. 4- Stats: after playing about 200 games in total, the stats come out pretty accurately- nothing so unbelievable that you would get disgusted, but also still allowing for the occaissional unexpected year for any given player. For example, I managed to hit 194 HRs for the season with the White Sox, which is almost identical to what the real team did in 07. Only stat that still comes out whacky (for gameplay reasons outlined below) is the # of walks- both allowed by human controlled pitchers, and gotten by my human controlled batters: way too low on both counts. 5- GAMEPLAY: the main thing most of us care about, though I must admit, it is a lot easier to overlook certain things this year simply because of the added fun of the eye-popping graphics. A. Pitching: still too easy to pinpoint your pitches to the CPU batters, even with every slider adjustment to make this more difficult. I play with the strike zone, hot and cold zones, and guess pitch all turned off, and the sliders set to make player controlled pitchers with way less command/accuracy than the default, and have even edited each one of my teams' pitchers (even their individual pitches) for less control- yet I still rarely unintentionally walked more than 1-2 CPU batters/game. What I would STILL like to see here is, even if you hit the pitch meter bar perfectly, that control of pitches still varies depending on your pitchers control ratings- with penalties of course more pronounced for missing the meter bar by a lot. As it is, its still too easy, and as a result, my team ERA for the season was 3.20. I gave up plenty of hits and HRs, but so few walks that the ERA stayed lower than it should have. B. Hitting: again I play with all the options turned off, so its more like real hitting- and also have the CPU pitch speed set quite high, so I don't have a lot of time to react to a pitch. Biggest gripe here is the same as last year: its still too hard to tell borderline pitches, and the CPU throws a LOT of borderline pitches. As a result, I rarely got more than 1-2 walks per game. Strikeouts were about right, however, but my team BA for the season was .301. Didn't score that many runs, mainly because of the lack of walks. Only thing I'd like to see is some tweak in this to make it easier to tell borderline pitches- easier if you turn the CPU pitch speed down, of course, but then its just too easy. C. Fielding: better animations, but still can't see that the throw meter bar does anything. Fielding is very perfunctory as a result. Could be way more challenging, and would add a lot to gameplay if it was. Errors seem to occur very randomly, unrelated to what you do with the throw meter bar. D. Baserunning: still a bit difficult to easily control multiple runners at once, which results in a lot of lost runs. Not a gamebreaker again, though. One other thing, which I discovered a little too late in the season: if you set the CPU base-stealing frequency up too high (in order to make that more of a challenge when playing against the CPU), all the CPU simulated games will result in crazy stolen base totals for the season....as an example, though my roster players had reasonable steal stats for the year under my control, Carl Crawford wound up with 140, and Juan Pierre with 160+. Yeah, they're both fast, but not THAT fast. Too fix this, you just have to set the slider bar for steals lower, though that makes your games against the CPU a little less challenging that way. E. CPU AI: pretty good overall, though the CPU still makes some odd moves with relief pitchers, often leaving in a clearly tiring pitcher for several innings, when there are plenty of other choices left in the pen. Also some whacky lineup decisions from time to time (ie: Vernon Wells batting 8th for The Jays, etc). And finally, a sports video game that allows you to save games in progress (even though it is fairly easy to play a full game in a half hour or so). Also a nice option to simulate games from any point in the game, and to also stop a sim in progress and jump back in to play the game. Why all sports video games don't incorporate a save game feature has always been a frustration for me. The Road to the Show mode (where you control a single player from the Minor leagues on up to The Show) is plenty of fun, though I haven't played that as much as season mode. Main complaint here is it can be awfully hard to hit some of the goals (ie: getting a lot of walks, for one), and the camera view while you are baserunning can make for a lot of baserunning mistakes (since you often can't see behind you, when a ball is hit in the gaps, for instance). The manager mode would also be a lot better if the commands weren't so absolute: for instance, I figured if you gave your hitter a "hit away" command, that he would swing or take the pitch based on his attributes- but no, the dude swings no matter what. To make him take a pitch, you have to command "take pitch", and again, even if its 2 strikes and right down the pipe, the batter will not swing. As a result, I never play manager mode, but it could be fun with a little tweaking. Playing against another human opponent is a ton of fun, mainly because the batter-pitcher aspect is a whole lot more variable than vs: the CPU. More walks, for one thing. Overall, this is the best baseball videogame on the market, though still with room for some improvement. MLB 09, maybe?????? Rating:  - * Great ... Great baseball game lots of fun, still cost to much on Amazon. I picked it up for 15 dollars at target. Rating: - * Best baseball game to date ... This game definitively lives up to all of the hype. If you are a hard core baseball fan, love video games, this game is the way to go. Pitching, fielding, hitting, and base running are the most realistic and fun of any other baseball game I have played. Pitching is not only pressing a button and expecting the pitch to go exactly to that spot, as with other games. In this game, the pitcher has to work to get a good feel for all his pitches. The more you use a type of pitch, and the better you get hitters out with it, the more effective it becomes. The less you use a pitch, the less effective, and harder to throw (as in real life). Franchise mode in this game is great. You have comprehensive control including player contracts, ticket prices, vendor prices, travel costs, and even bank loans. Since most people probably can't play every game in the season, the simulation mode is pretty accurate. You can even sim through innings in the middle of a game. Playing with the Giants, they were around 30-35 after two months of the season with pretty similar stats to their actual performance this year (horrible hitting but great starting pitching). To top it all off, graphics are excellent. Rating: - * The best ... I'm very picky about baseball games, but this is the best one I've ever played. Rating: - * One of the best Baseball series makes its way to the PS3 ... MLB 08: The Show has got all the bells and whistles you could want in a baseball game. The graphics are stunning and what you would expect from a PS3 sports title. Player models are accurate, I.E. Brandon Webb has a got a noticeably fatter body type than, the skinny Randy Johnson. The gameplay itself is great, there are a multitude of sliders you can change on top of four difficulty modes to really tune the game how you want it to be played. One problem was if none of the sliders were changed, you can get a ton of hits but only a few runs. So I've had lines like 3 runs 12 hits quite a lot. With the sliders I'm sure that this can be adjusted though. Now on to the gameplay modes. Franchise mode is exactly what it implies, you control everything about a team from its ticket and food prices to Double AA games that you can opt to play. Season mode- Same as franchise except you don't control the minor leagues, or ticket prices, etc, only play the games and set the line-ups. Manage Only Mode- You get to manage the game by watching it, and calling for hit and runs, steals, etc. This mode can also be played in your Season and Franchise. Sportcast Simulator- This mode can only be assessed in Franchise or Season, if anyone is familiar with MLB.com Gameday, that's basically what this mode is. You can still sub players, and basic managerial moves except it goes along quite quicker than Manage Only Mode. Road to the Show- This is the series signature career mode, where you start out as a scrub player and have to work your way to the majors. This is where the game loses some points, the series used to allow for the user to control the whole team (classic career) and now only allows the user to be their own player. So if you are a pitcher, you watch the team field. This is more realistic, however there is no reason they couldn't leave both career modes in, like MLB 07: The Show on the PS2, for those who liked it better. Online play is the other thing that brings the game down some. The PSN service is free, however this game can lag very bad, making the online games not very enjoyable. All in all if you like baseball this game will provide countless hours of fun, so don't hesitate to buy. |
Marie opens the show with an outdoor rendition of "We Need a Little Christmas" and then moves into the studio where Kirk Cameron arrives on a snowmobile (fresh from rescuing a trio of blonde snow bunnies) to read "The First Christmas Story." Lee Greenwood performs "Christmas to Christmas" and later a duet with Marie. "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is sung by Sally Struthers and daughter with help from the Osmond Boys--six stepping stones ages 4 to 12 who have the senior Osmonds' moves down pat. The adorable award, though, goes to Marie's 5-year-old son, Steven, who performs a rockin' version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" (clapping on the off-beat nearly the whole song).
Marie has a good, strong voice, but many of the songs are overproduced and melodramatic. This, most likely, is a product of the big, pouffy '80s (her hair and outfits are also bigger-than-life) rather than a reflection of her talents. The closing number, "O Holy Night," sung by Marie alone, is quite lovely. --Dana Van Nest
