3. MLB 15: The Show
Sony’s San Diego Studio celebrated 10 years of baseball simulation with their release of MLB 15: The Show, and once again knocked it out of the park. Despite the all-to-normal lack of well-polished commentary (it can be downright bad at times) MLB 15: The Show is still one of the most well-rounded sports sims available.
For years, sports gamers have begged for the implementation of year-to-year saves. Baseball has gruelingly long 162-game seasons and core players take great amounts of time building franchises and developing Road to the Show players. What San Diego Studio began to realize is most of these players will forgo upgrading to the latest version of the game in order to continue in their existing season. To alleviate this issue, players were given the option to continue their career modes from last year’s version into MLB 15: The Show.
Big changes were also made to MLB 15’s card game, Diamond Dynasty. This year, card contracts were eliminated meaning once a card was found, either in a pack or in a post game reward, that card could be used for the life of the game with no restrictions. The changes removed the frustration of having to keep up with how many games a particular player had left on their contract.
Value was also added to cards that players received yet had no intention of using. Unwanted cards could be broken down and “fed” to a created player on your roster bolstering their stats. This player could then be plugged in at any position on the Diamond Dynasty squad.
There is no competition for MLB: The Show on the horizon. But regardless of what other developers are doing, SCE San Diego continues to deliver a pure baseball experience year in and year out.
