For the Love of the Game | MLB 14: The Show PS4 Review

If you ask baseball fans what their favorite thing about baseball is, you’ll likely get told a multitude of different answers. There’s so many small elements to baseball that make it such a dynamic sport, like the fresh cut grass, the sun shining down, cold drinks and the greasy food. The environment of a baseball stadium is an experience like no other, and San Diego Studios creates the most realistic simulation of baseball ever made by not only enhancing the graphics, but by adding the little things, and the most minute details to craft one of the most authentic baseball experiences ever.

MLB 14: The Show is an absolutely beautiful looking game. While the series has always pushed the PlayStation 3 to its limits, the jump to more powerful hardware with the PlayStation 4 has allowed the game to take next steps in looking as real as it possibly could. Character models are highly detailed, and you may drop your jaw with how perfect some of the players look to their real life counterparts. Seeing the almost absurdly realistic beards on half of the Boston Red Sox players is almost unbelievable, and it’s unthinkable how much better MLB The Show will look years down the road on PS4.

Players and stadiums look so realistic, you’d swear you were there watching the game

Stadiums and their fans look much better than they’ve ever been in previous The Show entries, and the inclusion of much more realistic shadow and lighting effects really helps sell the authentic baseball feel. Watching the sun reflect off a player’s jersey as they swing, and seeing their jerseys fold and crinkle as they take swings is a little detail, but it’s left me in awe seeing such incredible, minute details that inch that much closer to reality. I actually paused my game multiple times to go into replay mode to capture gorgeous scenes of action that I wanted to captured and remember. Going up close to players’ jerseys and seeing individual stitches revealed by dynamic lighting effects is absurd in the best possible way. MLB 14 looks so realistic, my family thought I was just watching baseball games all day. The Detroit Tigers first baseman, and MLB 14′s cover athlete, Miguel Cabrera digs into the plate exactly like real life, and his virtual self has mannerisms identical to his real counterpart. The line between real and virtual baseball is blurring now thanks to this first step into next gen hardware for MLB The Show .

One of the most realistic – and gruesome – moments I experienced in MLB 14 was when I was playing an exhibition match against the Kansas City Royals. I hit a line drive straight at James Shields, ace of the Royals pitching staff, and it deflected off of his head. In past MLB games, this generally just resulted in the pitcher touching his head and showing minimal signs of damage, but in MLB 14, the pitcher reacts just like in real life: rolling around on the ground in terrible pain. I was blown away by this attention to detail, and surprised at how much it really looked like a comebacker hit Shields.

The broadcasting team in MLB The Show doesn’t change much from previous years, and it’s unfortunate, because the team has never really done a good job capturing the excitement of a real baseball broadcast. Matt Vasgersian is actually a great game commentator in real life, but his skills don’t transfer well to the game, as some of the calls seem forced and not genuine. Color commentary in between tries to do a good job of talking about players, but if you play a specific team long enough, you’re bound to hear the same comments over and over again, which breaks any sort of illusion or immersion you may have had before.

Those familiar the MLB The Show will know how the game is played, for the most part, because the gameplay is mostly the same from last year’s installment. You can choose from a multitude of options for pitching, hitting, and fielding to find a control scheme that best suits the way you play. For me, I like the classic button layout for hitting, the pure analog for pitching, and pressure buttons for fielding. MLB 14: The Show caters to so many different ways to play, that surely some control scheme will fit into a style that you enjoy, and it seems every year they add at least one way for new players to find success and to build up their baseball skills. MLB The Show has been trying to make the entry difficulty as low as they can so learning the game is gradual and dynamic to make improvement easy and fun.

New to this year’s game is a feature called “quick counts,” which allows you to play games at a amazingly fast pace by having the game simulate a count to put you in for an at bat; for instance, you might start an at bat on an 0-2 count or a 3-1 count. It’s a great way for those not great at batting to be put in counts that may be hard for them to reach with their own skills. It’s also a great option if you want to get in a quick game, and if you don’t have time to play a game going pitch for pitch.

There isn’t really any new features sans the improved graphics and animations for PS4 over PS3, but that isn’t inherently a bad thing. The modes offered are great, but it still would have been nice to see a few new modes that really show off what San Diego Studios can do with the upgraded hardware, but it’s more likely to happen when they have more time allocated to that and not boosting the graphics in their first attempt on PS4.

Long load times aren’t a new thing to the series, but MLB 14: The Show has some pretty miserable ones - especially when first starting up the game. I didn’t notice it at first, but after playing multiple games and starting up the console again and again, the increased load times were surprisingly longer than the PS3 version of the game. Sometimes, I would go do something to try and pass the time, but I’d come back and it would still be loading the game’s start screen or into a game, and it slows down the otherwise slick presentation normally found.

Online continues to be a struggle for San Diego Studios to nail in their series, and the jump to next gen hasn’t improved it whatsoever. Baseball games require a dedicated connection that has minimal to no lag, because even a millisecond could be the difference between a home run and a lazy pop up in foul territory. This has been the Achilles heel for the series for some time, and it’s taken out a potentially great mode with online tournaments and games. Playing local competitive multiplayer is fun, but you can almost always see the other player’s pitches before they throw them, which handicaps both pitchers from the start.

If you’ve already bought MLB 14: The Show on PlayStation 3, you’ve played almost the exact same game as the PlayStation 4 version, but this is absolutely the definitive version and a must buy for true baseball fans. If you want to see the best looking baseball game ever made, then buying MLB 14: The Show on PS4 is an absolute must. The amount of passion put into the MLB: The Show by San Diego Studios is evident every single year, and this year, they add minor, but noticeable additions to the game to make the most authentic baseball simulation to date, and an absolute dream to anyone wanting to lace up shoes and take control of their favorite teams.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PlayStation 4 version of the game MLB 14: The Show by San Diego Studios and distributed by Sony Computer Entertainment.