Road to the Show is back this year and by all accounts it’s pretty much the same as before only with a few enhancements. The core idea remains the same: you create a player and watch him climb the ladder of the minor leagues to one day be a star in The Show. This mode is incredibly addictive and if the franchise annoyances are too much for you to handle this is a fantastic alternative. As for what’s new? Well, you get to view 3rd base coach signs, partake in basic batting practice and other mini games, and other fairly minor bits. It’s when you consider the gameplay changes that this mode starts to shine like a new penny. So even if you exhausted this mode last year with MLB 08 you’ll get a better experience this time around. The load times can be a bit excessive, but when you are only seeing your in game moments, that comes with the territory.

Online play is smooth for the most part. There are a few hiccups – spikes of lag that are a bit annoying but for the most part it’s very much like playing an offline game. In addition, league play now offers live drafting, flex scheduling, and other niceties. While I was able to test base online play testing online league functionality is a bit out of the scope of this review – but online itself is certainly playable (more so than MLB 2K9, anyway.)

A sports game must, above all else, stay unpredictable. If things start to get stale or if you start losing faith in the design because you’ve seen everything there is to see then a game can quickly lose its appeal. And that‘s what makes The Show special. Things happen. You may not see a specific thing for 20 games. Then, you’ll see your catcher throw high on a steal attempt, sailing the ball into center field only to have the CF race in and throw a runner out at home who was trying to get greedy. Or it’ll be the bottom of the 9th in a tie ball game with the winning run on 3rd base with 1 out and the AI will perform a surprise suicide squeeze. Or maybe your pinpoint accuracy relief pitcher will take the mound in a tight game and all of a sudden look like a rookie – on this particular day – he just doesn’t have it. It’s moments like this that give you a tingly feeling every time you fire the game up because you have no idea what’s going to happen. And that’s the mark of an expertly crafted slice of game design.

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