Out of the Park Baseball 9 Review

BY Rabie Hassoun | POSTED: 15 July 2008

If you are a baseball fan, you can't get better than this!



Baseball is not exactly all that popular down here in the Middle East. You might see a few people rocking MLB licensed caps, but that does not mean that they have the slightest idea what the logo represents. The sport overall might sound over complicated. The number of positions, the load of statistics on hand and the deep history of baseball make it all that much harder to follow and understand it truly. Out of the Park Baseball in its 9th version tries its best to improve over what is already established as the best baseball simulator out there by offering a new user-friendly interface and a load of options for you to mess around with.

Unlike all the past versions of the game, you will not need any patches or updates to quickly start a real time MLB season in this year’s game. The feature comes built in the game for the first time this year. The MLB simulation happens to be the weakest point of the game however. Players will be signing unrealistic contracts (in both duration and money sum wise) and the numbers and statistics are a bit off compared to what we have come to expect from past MLB seasons and players.

On the other hand, the best feature in this game is the historical and fictional leagues. You will be able to start a league in 1900 or even before depending on how much free time you have on your hand. The engine is perfectly built taking into consideration some key historical facts and decisive financial matters. Clubs moving to new cities will take effect exactly how and when it occurred back in the day. Star players in the 1920s will be paid what they were getting paid, a few thousand dollars instead of the millions today’s stars gain. This mode has to be the most addictive mode we have seen in any videogame IF you happen to be a baseball fan.

Taking care of your internal matters might be simple and all; it is the external effects that really hurt your team on the long run. You will have a full scouting team at your disposal looking for rare gyms around the globe. The scouting system this year can be adjusted, you can either have it automatically set or you can manually assign scouting missions for your scouts. Another important aspect in any sport simulator is the behaviour of the opposing managers in the game, or in other words the intelligence of the AI overall. Our impression of the AI in this game is mixed. You will notice some very smart acquisitions and game plans sometimes, but in other occasions you might face some very stupid decisions made by opposing managers, which of course is to your advantage at the end of the day.

The sound and graphics departments are not exactly the most important factors in mind when considering a management game. In this game the graphics is based on a 2D engine where you will barely figure out what is going on. You will have to read the text produced during the games for you to find out exactly what is happening. Other than a few clicks and beeps the game offers no real sound effects. You have to make sure that your own playlist is playing in the background for you to survive the hours you will spend playing this game.

Out of the Park Baseball 9 feels and plays exactly like the football manager series does. The menus are clean and almost identical and the game progress all around is way too similar. That is surely an advantage for the game considering the number of fans the football manager series have accumulated over the years. Baseball fans should not think twice regarding purchasing this game. Sports fans in general with no real background of baseball might also be interested, after all the number of options this game offers is absolutely revolutionary in the genre. Gamers with no sport interest what so ever will have a hard time adjusting to the lack of graphical beauty and sound effects, so they are best advised to back off this one.