MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

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Herschie
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MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Herschie » March 26th, 2019, 5:04 am

Lets' go!
Batter up!
We're taking the afternoon off!
It's a beautiful day for a ballgame, a ballgame today!
The fans are out to get a ticket or two!
From Walla Walla, Washington to Kalamazoo!

Ok, so it's 24º in Chicago now, so maybe not all that good of a day for a ballgame. But it's 71º in my video game room! Wait, it's hot...dammit, my wife cranked the heat up again! 74º, and now I'm sweating. And I just took a shower too!

Just opened a window...that's better. For me, baseball season officially begins when The Show comes out, which was about five hours ago. So far I'm very impressed with this game. Seems to have more life to it, and I love how they added the Wrigley Field organ. Plus, the crowd comes to life during key moments. The Marlins jerseys are absolutely spectacular, and I love the graphics. Not totally sold on the new camera angles, and there have been a couple minor glitches, but I trust that these will be patched out in due time. Hitting is a lot harder too.

19 is a winner! And my wife steamed me some Vienna Beef hot dogs, then wrapped them in foil so that I had that Wrigley Field feeling as I played my first game. So that was great of her. I ended up eating the as I waited for the patch to install.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby VideoGameCritic » March 26th, 2019, 11:20 pm

Hot dogs wrapped in foil! So good. The only thing better is hot dogs on rollers.
Herchie, I always look forward to your slice of life baseball reviews. It puts me in the spirit!

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Retro STrife
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Retro STrife » March 27th, 2019, 9:57 am

I haven't bought a new baseball game since the mid-2000s, but I'm open to it. I considered it last year, but heard of all the issues. Now I'm seeing ads for The Show 19 everywhere and I'm interested again. Keep us posted on your thoughts!

Herschie
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Herschie » April 1st, 2019, 11:58 pm

I'm glad you guys like my reviews, they often just come to mind as I'm typing them.

Retro STrife wrote:I haven't bought a new baseball game since the mid-2000s, but I'm open to it. I considered it last year, but heard of all the issues. Now I'm seeing ads for The Show 19 everywhere and I'm interested again. Keep us posted on your thoughts!


Believe it or not, I thought about an old game that I played about twenty years ago. I was pretty excited that they had a "dusk" setting in Triple Play 2000. It did look pretty cool:

Triple_Play (1).jpg
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So as I was playing a night game, it brought back such memories. They do look similar, albeit with The Show having much better graphics. The game looks much better on the PS4, but since I can only upload pictures so big, I had to resize the file.

Dusk (2).jpg
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Of course, in The Show, it doesn't actually stay dusk, it gets darker and darker before it's pitch black. Understandably, due to the PS1 limitations, Triple Play 2000 couldn't have pulled this off.

But there are so many little things like this that make for a great experience. 19 is basically the most polished version out there, and there are a lot of small improvements that really add up.

And I had fun going back and playing Triple Play. I remember back in 1999, I wasn't all that upset that my girlfriend dumped me because that game had just came out. I just wish that my wife would hold off on the list of chores.

Herschie
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Herschie » May 14th, 2019, 6:08 pm

A couple screenshots. Sorry for the poor picture quality, it was off an old VHS.

Leon Durham getting his big pitch off of Expos pitcher Bryn Smith, July of 1987.
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Billy Hatcher on the big night for the Reds, October 20th, 1990.
8BQKz4n2hu-_hvMnbw_rDQ_r-min.jpg
8BQKz4n2hu-_hvMnbw_rDQ_r-min.jpg (109.96 KiB) Viewed 1736 times

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Retro STrife
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Retro STrife » May 23rd, 2019, 2:03 pm

Following up on my above post, I just bought this game last night. I love sports and sports video games, but baseball is much lower on my list than other sports. (More of a football and basketball guy, particularly.) But hey, playing baseball is more fun than watching it, so I had a craving for it. It helped that most reviews are saying this is the best The Show game in years and years - definitely the best of this generation. So I scooped it up last night - my first new baseball game in like 10 or 15 years.. and it's also very rare that I pay full price ($60) for a game.. I usually wait til at least the $20-$30 range.

So lots of firsts here..hopefully the game lives up to it. Played about 4 or 5 innings yesterday and seems pretty good so far, but I gotta log more time before making any judgments.

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Retro STrife
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Retro STrife » May 28th, 2019, 12:32 pm

So far I'm having mixed feelings on the game. I give it credit for having a ton of modes and options, and being a pretty polished experience. But I'm not having as much fun as I do with other sports games, and I absolutely hate the fielding.

Right now I'm playing the "March to October" mode, because it let's you play snippets of games and the highlights of the season, rather than playing a full season. I like picking up the game in the 7th inning and finishing it off. God, I cannot imagine sitting through a full 9 innings of this game ... so tedious. I hate watching baseball, it's so boring, and this game is only reinforcing that for me. But usually I can enjoy baseball when I'm the one playing it.. yet, it still feels tedious when playing The Show. Why does it move so slowly?? This game really needs to pick up the pace, just like real baseball does.

On top of that, the pitching and fielding really annoys me. I'm using the meter method for pitching, and it's really tough to pitch accurately with it, but I want to stick with it. Then the fielding is absolutely broken in my opinion... maybe I'm using it wrong, but it's too easy to miss ground balls and misjudge fly balls.. the fielding system should be more flexible. But what I hate most is how long it takes to get a throw to first base.. too many runners make it safe because of the slow throws.

I 50% hate this game.. and yet, 50% want to play it the second I get home.. I'm so torn on how I feel. I plan to try The Show mode next, if I can stick it out with this game for that long. But, for people that like baseball, maybe this is a great experience. Don't trust my opinion, since my dislike of the sport is readily apparent here.

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ASalvaro
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby ASalvaro » May 28th, 2019, 3:53 pm

Retro STrife wrote:So far I'm having mixed feelings on the game. I give it credit for having a ton of modes and options, and being a pretty polished experience. But I'm not having as much fun as I do with other sports games, and I absolutely hate the fielding.

Right now I'm playing the "March to October" mode, because it let's you play snippets of games and the highlights of the season, rather than playing a full season. I like picking up the game in the 7th inning and finishing it off. God, I cannot imagine sitting through a full 9 innings of this game ... so tedious. I hate watching baseball, it's so boring, and this game is only reinforcing that for me. But usually I can enjoy baseball when I'm the one playing it.. yet, it still feels tedious when playing The Show. Why does it move so slowly?? This game really needs to pick up the pace, just like real baseball does.

On top of that, the pitching and fielding really annoys me. I'm using the meter method for pitching, and it's really tough to pitch accurately with it, but I want to stick with it. Then the fielding is absolutely broken in my opinion... maybe I'm using it wrong, but it's too easy to miss ground balls and misjudge fly balls.. the fielding system should be more flexible. But what I hate most is how long it takes to get a throw to first base.. too many runners make it safe because of the slow throws.

I 50% hate this game.. and yet, 50% want to play it the second I get home.. I'm so torn on how I feel. I plan to try The Show mode next, if I can stick it out with this game for that long. But, for people that like baseball, maybe this is a great experience. Don't trust my opinion, since my dislike of the sport is readily apparent here.

Play a 162 game season! Lol

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Retro STrife
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Re: MLB The Show 19 (Playstation 4)

Postby Retro STrife » July 2nd, 2019, 4:20 pm

Despite my complaints above, this has become my main game played so far this summer. I play it a few times each week, and I keep going back to it. I might even be appreciating baseball a bit more than usual this summer, as a result.

So far, I played a full season of the March to October mode. Good mode for people with short attention spans like me -- you never play a full 9 inning game in this mode, and most of the games are simulated. You probably play like 20-30 games before the playoffs, and most of those games start you off in like the 6th or 7th inning, and I love the shortened games. I was really frustrated with the pitching, hitting, and fielding controls for awhile... this is not an easy pick-up-and-play sports game. It took me awhile to get decent and play respectably, even in the lower "Veteran" difficulty. I also hated the slow pace of the game before, but I changed the presentation to "fast" mode and that makes it more bearable.

Since finishing March to October, I've now been playing a few games online. Great online experience so far. No lag, and the game does a good job of matchmaking you with an even opponent -- better job than most sports games. I'm hoping to try The Show mode eventually too.


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