PlayStation 4
Released in 2021 by Sony Interactive Entertainment
Grade: A+
The Show 21 is yet another immersive and engrossing baseball simulation. Once again the series evolves with many minor improvements, but it also has a few unwanted presentation updates.
Where it falls in the series
Sony’s baseball series started with 1996’s MLB Pennant Race on PS1, and it was named “The Show” in 2006. This is the seventh installment on PS4, and it coincides with the first releases on PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Praises and gripes
If you’ve read my other Show reviews, you already know I love this series. I appreciate its beautiful looks, intuitive controls, user-friendly interfaces, and unyielding commitment to baseball strategy. You can really dig into it by learning crafty pitching tactics, honing your eye at the plate, executing fundamental defense, and making managerial decisions. The game demands patience, focus, and baseball knowledge.
Comparing it to the last one I’ve played, MLB The Show 19, this one has nice gameplay enhancements, especially once the ball is put in play. Infielders look humanlike sprawling out for grounders. Errors seem to happen organically. The ball can take an odd bounce off a base. Catchers do a realistic job blocking wild pitches and coming out of their crouch to scoop up bunts. Close baserunning plays unfurl the way they should, and the collision detection issues from years past seem to be fixed (well, not quite all of them, I once witnessed a guy run through the first baseman on a pop fly.)
The game logic has been tweaked to reflect baseball’s changing trends. You’ll see more home runs, more strikeouts, and more defensive shifts. Old-school purists might not like it, but hey, the game is supposed to replicate the MLB, so I think they did a nice job in this respect.
This game is loaded with options. Playing locally against the CPU, I like how I can have the difficulty automatically adjust to my performance. As a pitcher I’m a Hall of Famer, but as a hitter I’m merely an all-star. If I come home drunk and play like a moron, the difficulty will bump down a notch until I clean up my act. I like the option to have my fielders automatically run toward the ball while letting me control their throws. I’m fine with balls and strikes being subjected to human error, but I choose to have perfect calls in the field, avoiding video replay challenges. There are even more ways to customize the pace of the game, even more camera views, and a handy option to quickly see replays of home runs and spectacular defensive plays.
When pitching, there’s a new addition, a small shadow around the ball marker. I was initially like, “get that stupid thing off the screen,” but then realized it represented the command of each pitch, which can change throughout the pitcher’s outing based on his energy and confidence. And here’s yet another new thing: there are now three play styles, casual, simulation, and competitive. The competitive setting is like the traditional simulation setting, except it’s slightly less likely to force a certain result based on historical averages. If you’ve ever felt the game “robbed” you by forcing a play that you couldn’t avoid, the competitive setting dials that effect back a bit. This improved my enjoyment of the gameplay and, in particular, it fixed the annoyingly bad calls on check swings that happened on simulation. It’s just a really crafty addition to this already awesome baseball game.
The game defaults to a new pitching system in which you need to gracefully maneuver the right thumbstick in different shapes depending on the pitch type, a la MLB 2K13. This is quite the curious update, considering I can’t imagine too many gamers miss the old 2K scheme, and considering that it’s a terribly laborious way to play. Luckily, you have the option of playing with the Show’s classic pitching meter, which still works like a dream.
My biggest presentation gripe is the sound of the crowd. Instead of the soothing hum of 50,000 fans, it sounds like a digitized stew of 20 conversations happening at once, like a bunch of phone lines got crossed. Also, the crowd reactions don’t always match the action on the field.
One sound nitpick is offset by one sound improvement: the ultra-satisfying crack of the bat, which is more like a “THW-ACK!” echoing throughout the ballpark. The sound of a broken bat is also spot-on.
Visually, the in-game informational displays have more stuff on them than before, with modern stats like exit velocity and launch angle. They also have more pizazz, too much for my liking. I adjusted, but I wondered if the developers forgot why previous versions felt so comfortable to play, showing critical info in an understated way.
The many ballparks come to life in loving detail, except the Minnesota Twins got screwed in the process and their ballpark has faulty lighting. I love how the game gives you over 100 legendary players, who you can freely move to any team, but it sure is odd to see Willie Mays and Johnny Bench do jivey dances with their modern-day teammates.
Franchise mode is seriously deep, with a million team management details to control or automate, and presented with elegant UI layouts. There’s the Road to the Show mode, which lets you create a player and work through the minor leagues. If you’d like to experience an MLB season in a reasonable timeframe, there’s March to October, in which you play only at key points in the season. There’s a simple postseason mode, although to my dismay, you can’t customize a tournament format to your liking. There’s the convenient inclusion of “Retro Mode,” a loving ode to Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on SNES. There’s an online-dependent Moments mode, putting you into a time machine and replaying classic moments from MLB history. And of course there’s an intensive online mode called Diamond Dynasty, where players grind their way to assembling teams of legendary players. Given that all those legends are free to use in local play, and given that the CPU feels natural to play against, I regularly ignore the popular online mode.
And while I’m making this review longer than it needs to be, you want to know what The Show should add? Batting practice. And pitching practice. Before the game, put me in the ballpark, let me take 20 cuts at the plate and let me throw 10 pitches in the bullpen, and I’ll be ready to go for first pitch.
Anyway, the Show rocks as usual. In many ways, it’s the same old game it’s been for over 10 seasons, but it keeps getting better, little by little. It seems like it’s made by people who love baseball, for people who love baseball, and I’m starting to think it’s approaching “greatest sports video game franchise ever” territory 🫢
Published October 17, 2024