Games
MLB ‘07: Totally Pointless
By Kevin Clair
I’ve always been something of a gamer-from-a-distance. I would liken my relationship with that scene to a second language. I read Penny Arcade, so I know the relevant titles (albeit with a certain editorial slant applied to them), and I can smile, nod politely, and generally be aware of what is being discussed if I’m party to a conversation about them. When it comes down to taking controller in hand and throwing down, though, it’s all Katamari Damacy and various EA Sports titles for me. There comes a time in life when one must pick one’s poisons; video games were destined to be a passing fancy for me.
I suppose I could be called a social gamer; I play games that my friends are playing, because it allows for conversation. Sports games have always been good for that; many is the lazy afternoon I have whiled
away discussing the ins and outs of the Big 12 schedule in the various iterations of NCAA Football, talking shop about the best way to defeat Nebraska in Lincoln and such like. So when my friend Neal purchased MLB ’07 and began telling me all about his slow rise through the ranks of
the Cubs organization, it was really only a matter of time before I, too, would fall victim to its charms.
Anyone who has tried playing any kind of baseball game on any post-NES system knows how troublesome they tend to be. Apparently these titles sell, so perhaps there is a generation gap at play here that I don’t know about; nonetheless, there is a certain romance to RBI Baseball and Baseball Stars that is difficult for any new baseball game to overcome. I’m unconvinced that the bells and whistles of late-gen baseball games can’t be reconciled with the simplicity and elegance of the original (and best) NES baseball titles. Judging by the reviews, EA came quite close last year with its NCAA 2007 title, only it passed under the radar because nobody cares about college baseball. But something about the way Neal talked about it—really, it was the fact he was talking about it at all—led me to think that this game was different.
It wasn’t. In fact, judging by the gameplay experience of MLB ‘07, baseball games have devolved severely since my days playing Hardball 5 in middle school. I started a career in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization (support the home team), and was instantly awash in moronic errors which often cost my team games. The first came when, facing a 1-1 count, I popped a ball up in front of the home dugout. No one came anywhere close to catching it, yet I was called out for some unfathomable reason. The hits kept on coming; having set my guy to have blistering speed on the basepaths, I was pleased to learn these skills were useless when ‘L1′ caused him to instantly take off for second base on a pick-off play, rather than go back to first like he should have.
Oh, sure, some cool things happened, like the time I was brought in as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the eighth inning with Altoona trailing by two runs, then hitting a two-run double followed by a walk-off home run in the tenth. But gradually, the annoying, easily fixable bugs in the game overwhelmed any positive benefit I was getting from playing it. The final straw came in a game where, with a runner on
first and one out, I fielded a ground ball at second base. Excited to turn a double play to end the inning, I was shocked to find hitting ‘X’ suddenly caused a throw to the plate rather than a flip to the shortstop. Next thing I knew, we were trailing by three runs. I calmly walked to the television and turned the game off; I have not played it since.
In the meantime, I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials for the PS3 version of the game. They’re flashy, of course; the ball breaks through the projection, David Wright hits it into the multiverse, etc. etc. There’s probably a fair amount of bullshot at work here, but at the same time, it is evident that Sony put a lot more effort into prettying up the PS3 version than they did into, say, making the PS2 version anything more than a festering boil. And herein lies the rub, the regle de jeu that have historically kept me out of
the video game world. I was well over a year behind in finally getting a Playstation 2, when I finally did; I tend to be a little sluggish when it comes to keeping up with this sort of thing. I am often punished,
then, when I buy a game that’s set to be a marquee title for the next-gen consoles; all us semi-Luddites are left with a subpar experience. Why even put out a game, if you’re just going to top yourself three months later? I don’t understand.
Then again, it could just be Sony.
(Screenshots courtesy Games.net)