The show is back!

[RavenSEAL]

Sony has blown the lid off of its 2011 baseball sim. The company wisely chose to retain cover star Joe Mauer, the All-Star Minnesota Twins catcher, sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Famer, and likely recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in whatever the most prestigious category is. The Show is also finally adding analog controls for pitching and hitting this year, as well as an again-revamped Road to the Show mode and four-player cooperative play.

Analog pitching, hitting, and throwing is the biggest change this year. Hitting works much the same as in 2K's rival MLB 2K series, where you bring the stick back to start your stride, then push forward to swing the bat. In Sony's game, however, you choose between power and contact swings and try to guess the pitch type before the ball is thrown. ESPN's Jon Robinson had positive things to say about the system after getting his hands on it, which we have not had a chance to do yet.

Pitching uses a similar back-and-forth analog motion, with the twist that you must hit a target along the upper arc of the stick's throw in order to hit your spot correctly. Additionally, your pitch's velocity is determined by the speed with which you flick the stick forward. Hopefully the pitching mechanic avoids the spotty detection that has plagued 2K's gesture-based system for years.

Analog fielding allows players to fake throws and choose their spots with more position, but Robinson had little good to say about his time with the system. He calls out the clumsy pre-loading mechanic, which requires you to start your throwing motion on the analog as you're moving into position to field the ball. I've never found a baseball sim with defensive controls that do anything but frustrate me into turning off fielding control entirely, so I can't say that I'm surprised to find that adding analog complexity isn't helping the situation.

The new co-op mode has potential. You can play online or off in 1v2, 2v2, or 2vCPU configurations. This is one feature that I've been personally pining for for years. One of the beautiful things about a team sport like baseball is its cooperative nature, making this addition a natural fit for The Show.

Sony has been on top of the baseball sim world for years, and 2011's crop of features reads like a winner. So long as The Show avoids going backwards, 2K needs to pull off something special to compete this year. But how much fun would that be?

Of course, 2K can't really compete unless it somehow puts, like, two Joe Mauers on the cover. Because we all know where The Show gets its true power.

Trailer in link:
http://www.gameinformer.com/games/m.../2010/12/16/announcement-trailer-details.aspx

 

[KeithTalent]

Has anyone played the actual game? I tried the demo hoping they would have made the hitting at least a bit easier and wow, not only was hitting harder, pitching was stupidly hard!

There is only the option to use the stupid stick for hitting and pitching in the demo, so I assume you can turn that off in the real game? Anyone have experience playing the game that can comment on the difficulty with hitting/pitching compared to prior years?

I have the last two versions of the game and I'd like to get the new one, but if they keep making it harder, then I don't see the point. Heck, I like realism, but not to the point where the game is no longer fun. D:

KT

 

[American Gunner]

I bought the game, played it for two weeks and decided it wasn't that great and sold it.

 

[tdawg]

Has anyone played the actual game? I tried the demo hoping they would have made the hitting at least a bit easier and wow, not only was hitting harder, pitching was stupidly hard!

There is only the option to use the stupid stick for hitting and pitching in the demo, so I assume you can turn that off in the real game? Anyone have experience playing the game that can comment on the difficulty with hitting/pitching compared to prior years?

I have the last two versions of the game and I'd like to get the new one, but if they keep making it harder, then I don't see the point. Heck, I like realism, but not to the point where the game is no longer fun. D:

KT

I've been playing this since 08 and have bought every new one on release day. I had no problems with hitting last year (I basically stick to RTTS mode only), nor with 09, on Rookie hitting. Was a career .400+ hitter in 09 and 10, but now in '11, whether by Analog or by timing even on Rookie, I struggle to hit .200. When I got called up, I could barely square up a baseball. Even when I switched back to just hitting 'X' to swing, the PCI was "realistic" so when my timing was perfect, my contact was still all over the place.

I finally had to play with the sliders to make the timing window bigger and increase the percentage of solid hits to make the game at least a little less frustrating than it has been. I'm back to Analog swinging after these changes and it's getting somewhat better.

I like the pitching mode on Analog, but I've read that there's no problem going back to previous pitching methods. Pretty sure they did that with fielding too.

For me, it's purely hitting that has been driving me up the wall, but I love this game in general and will continue to play it and try to learn better timing and pitch recognition.

 

[KeithTalent]

I've been playing this since 08 and have bought every new one on release day. I had no problems with hitting last year (I basically stick to RTTS mode only), nor with 09, on Rookie hitting. Was a career .400+ hitter in 09 and 10, but now in '11, whether by Analog or by timing even on Rookie, I struggle to hit .200. When I got called up, I could barely square up a baseball. Even when I switched back to just hitting 'X' to swing, the PCI was "realistic" so when my timing was perfect, my contact was still all over the place.

I finally had to play with the sliders to make the timing window bigger and increase the percentage of solid hits to make the game at least a little less frustrating than it has been. I'm back to Analog swinging after these changes and it's getting somewhat better.

I like the pitching mode on Analog, but I've read that there's no problem going back to previous pitching methods. Pretty sure they did that with fielding too.

For me, it's purely hitting that has been driving me up the wall, but I love this game in general and will continue to play it and try to learn better timing and pitch recognition.

OK, thanks, that means I should just stay away. I had no problems with '09, I could hit and pitch quite well, but in '10 I was lucky to hit .200 even after switching the sliders in an attempt to make things easier (I had no problems pitching). If '11 is more difficult than that, well then I'd be lucky to get a single hit in a game!

It's a real shame; they should give you the option of at least making it easier for those that want to just play and have fun rather than going for 100% realism and frustrating the lesser players like me.

KT

 

[Queasy]

I played the PS3 demo and kind of had similar thoughts to Keith. MLB 2K11's batting and pitching mechanics is much better IMHO. Just too bad it suffers in nearly every other area.