MLB Power Pros is another Japanese baseball game by Konami, the same company that brought you the brilliant Japanese Import Professional Baseball Spirits 4 It was surprising that 2K Games licensed the Power Pros franchise from Konami for a US release given they have already released The Bigs and MLB 2K this year – but none of that really matters in the long run because this is the best baseball game of 2007.
When you open the case and see a 51 page manual, you know this isn’t an American baseball game. Although the box looks like it’s one of those Backyard Baseball games and seems to be geared to kids, it really couldn’t be further from the truth, as this is a stat freak’s fantasy come true with a wonderful action element.
There’s no doubt that Japanese games – especially baseball if you’ve played Spirits – can be very text heavy so the menus to an untrained eye look rather overwhelming. In fact there is quite a bit of information on every page – perhaps too much – but overall, managing the in-game menus is pretty easy; it is better to have more information than less!
The front end is divided up into 12(!) different sections. A few of the menu choices let you buy items from the shop and view baseball cards. There’s another option for wii-mote motion sensitive games. You can play in a league with up to six other human players if you like. The season mode is a bit of a misnomer; that mode is actually a ten season franchise-esque mode. Finally there’s success mode which combines playing baseball with an RPG.
Success mode is something you would normally find only in Japan after all, it’s not often that you have to try to date women while training for baseball. All dating aside, in Success mode you start off as a college student who decides to play baseball. Every week you can do more training, study for classes, or attempt to hook up (hello, ladies). You can also become injured and/or flunk out of school, so balancing all of these things is very important. Oh yeah, you also play baseball games, but you only play when you’re involved in the action – and you don’t play much until you’re an upperclassman. Once you become a team captain, you get to control everything from the 8th inning on. No idea why the 8th inning was the time here, so you’ll just have to run with it. Calling Success mode hard is an understatement yet it is incredibly addictive in a “oh my goodness it’s already 2AM and I have to work tomorrow” sort of way.
While Success mode is a lot of fun, season (franchise) mode is even better. You are the GM of a team – either a current MLB team or, if you choose expansion mode, you can create your own team using existing player rosters. Your assistant treats you like you’re a complete idiot and have never played a baseball game before (even explaining how the wild card system works), but it is very helpful for those new to the game. In league mode you earn points by playing games, which you can then use for various items, such as purchasing player practice items which enhance their training (sorry, no steroids). The amount of depth in this mode is insane – the statistics alone for players could keep you hunkered down for a day or more. The beauty of this mode is that you can just act only as a GM, and not have to worry about playing out the actual games, or you can also just take the role of a single player.
There’s never been an action based baseball game with so many stats. At the end of the game, you can find out the pitch location of every pitch thrown, how many of the batters swung on the first pitch, how many fly balls went to left field (and what pitch was used for each of them), and so forth. This game is no doubt a stat lover’s dream. The statistical simulations are very realistic and the scoring rules are applied correctly.
