I have a list of genres I’ve happily ignored in gaming.  I don’t consider myself “missing out” on things unless I run into a situation where I have more gaming time than games to play.  I’ve been pretty good at keeping my ratio in the correct order, but something completely unexpected happened to me recently.  I was forced to confront one of my comfortable constants and… well… destroy it.

Find out the details after the jump…

I’m not a big sports fan.  I like attending sporting events in person, I like playing some sports, but it’s not a fallback form of entertainment to me.  I rarely watch sports on TV (except the Superbowl, but you’ve probably already accurately suspected that was to watch the commercials.)  So when faced with the recent release of MLB ’09 The Show, I was in familiar territory.  Familiar, while at the same time not familiar.  You see I played the demo for MLB ’08 The Show many times last year which is very unusual for me.  At the end of the day though, I was able to resist the draw of MLB ’08 The Show because I could tell myself “I don’t like sports games” and finally, that stuck.  I was able to break MLB ’08 The Show’s grip on me.

This year, I didn’t fare as well.  This year I had an opportunity to play the full game and not just the demo.  I was able to go through the entire customization process and create an eery doppelganger.  I was able to select the announcer’s pronunciation of my name.  I was able to start a Road To The Show sim career.  I was able to play game after game only to realize that I’d strayed from my comfortable path.  Not only was I playing a sports game, I was playing the season simulation portion of the game.  I was so far from my norm that everything seemed new and fresh.  Above all, I was having a blast.

Playing Road To The Show mode, while not new but new to me, was an interesting concept.  Just like in real baseball, you only play in parts of the game that feature your character.  If you’re a pitcher, you’ll pitch a half an inning to the opposing team and depending on the line-up, you may or may not bat in the other half of the inning.  You may only actively play in 3 innings per game.  In less than the time it takes to play one “real” baseball game, you could be 2-3 months into your simulated season.

Another genre of games I don’t personally play is role playing games.  There are several RPG aspects to MLB ’09 The Show, especially in Road To The Show.  You can spend training points to focus your training on certain abilities or attributes as well as divvy points to tweak your characters abilities.  Not being the biggest sports fan in the world, I have to admit I didn’t know what some of the abbreviations meant in the game, but I got most of it and it didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

I can’t really compare MLB ’09 The Show to other baseball games because frankly, I haven’t really played other baseball games but as a gaming enthusiast and someone that can appreciate a great show of tech, the folks behind MLB ’09 The Show should  be held up there with the best of them.  There are so many little nuances and touches to the game that could have easily been overlooked or simply left out.  The game engine alone is impressive, allowing replays in various speed with full camera control.  You can zoom out to see most of the outfield, or you can fill your screen with the pock-marked face of an outfielder… and it all looks great.  I’m quite a few games in and haven’t noticed the announcers being repetitive.  I’m just stuck at anything major to complain about.

Since I don’t want to come off as drooling all over this game (which I have and will likely continue to do) there are a few issues I’ve run across, but most are simple/small little animation glitches or logic issues that could probably be worked around if I knew more what I was doing.  Occasionally, and especially during slow-mo replays, the ball will get a bit wonky.  It never seems to affect gameplay as far as I can tell, but a ball might fly 100 feet and then suddenly angle up 15 degrees into a fielder’s glove, or someone will throw the ball and 6 feet out the trajectory will change.

I will admit that I still have a long way to go before I’m “comfortable” with all the controls for the various things the game allows you to do.  This, to me, seems to be the hardcore baseball fan’s dream game…  very few things that I could think of have gone unaddressed.  Okay, I’m lying, I couldn’t think of anything they haven’t addressed.  I even like that they let you choose from multiple pitching schemes.  It really seems like it can cater to a large number of baseball fans, from more simple exhibition games, to full-on manual sim seasons.

If you own a Playstation (the game is on PSP, PS2, and PS3) and you remotely like baseball or sports games, you owe it to yourself to give this game a shot.  I played it on the PS3 and it was… for lack of intentionally dumbing down my description, spectacular.  If you don’t play sports games, you at least owe it to yourself to download the demo and give it a try.  You never know, you might get hooked just like I did.