PlayStation 3
Released in 2014 by Sony Computer Entertainment
Grade: A+
Just because it’s a roster update doesn’t mean it’s not great.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the eighth of ten editions on PS3, and it came out the same year as the first on PS4.
Praises and gripes
By the time I played this game, I had already anointed The Show 13 as the A+ gem of the franchise, with gameplay and graphics that been refined little by little, year after year.
I looked for a reason why 14 wasn’t as good as 13, and I never found it.
This is another round of The Show in all its glory. The gameplay is intuitive and just as complex as it should be. The action is lifelike.
The pitching-hitting logic is rich. The ball soars toward the plate realistically, no matter the type of pitch. The graphics and sound are top of the line. The options are immense, including an effective set of sliders to tweak the difficulty to your skills.
The new gimmick this year is “Quick Counts” where you can skip over the first few pitches of each at-bat. You step to the plate, and it’s already 1-2. Not my cup of tea. With The Show, I’m actually happy to labor through every pitch of a nine-inning game.
With some extra time on my hands (it’s May 2020 as I write this), I played Road to the Show, which I’ve almost always ignored. And guess what? It’s repetitive and downright depressing.
Playing RTTS as a pitcher might not be so bad. Going outing by outing seems to make decent sense, each one telling a different story. The feel of starting against weak AA hitters and working your way up is compelling.
As a position player, boy, it’s just not fun. Hitting is fine, but you don’t get to enjoy wearing down a pitcher over the course of a game or making strategic offensive choices. Fielding gets repetitive no matter what position you play, and baserunning is an absolute chore. I started to get annoyed whenever I got on base.
The biggest disappointment about RTTS is that nothing really happens. I kept waiting for the manager to tell me to do something, like, “Lay down a bunt to 3rd base, kid” followed by some kind of momentum boost or extra bonus if I did my job right. Nope, nothing.
Whatever, the joy of The Show is playing the standard team vs. team game, and it’s here still. It’s great, in fact, just about as perfect of a baseball game as I could want.