Last year’s MLB game was an excellent game (see our review ), so expectations were very high going into this year’s model. I am happy to report that overall, my expectations were met with MLB 06 The Show.

First, let’s talk about what’s been added to the game: you’ll immediately notice the menus have been graphically enhanced and there are a lot more options than last year’s bare bones game. In MLB 06 you can choose an exhibition game, a career mode, season mode, home run derby or King of The Diamond.

Of course, exhibition is a quick one off game. Career mode is a new one, but similar to the PS2 version and it’s quickly become one of my favorite modes. Instead of managing a team through a season, you become a player. You create the player’s name, age, height, weight, jersey number and primary playing position. Using a variety of attribute points you define your player. For a starting pitcher, do you boost up on stamina, or try to give up less home runs per 9 innings? You decide, but you only have a finite amount of points.

Once you’ve set up the player, you then choose the team you wish to play for and the in-game options. You are then given a list of achievements you need to accomplish in Spring Training. Obviously the better you perform, the better your contract. My pitcher went 0-4 with an ERA of 14.63 and you can guess it was no contract for him. Time to toodle around the minor leagues hoping for someone to need a lefty, but that didn’t work so much either.

Yes, that’s right, I said minor leagues. They are here in the game and you can play them out. Don’t’ expect deep or accurate rosters however – in my time with the Orioles there were quite a few MLB level players in Ottawa (the AAA team)…and these were players with the Orioles the whole year last year, so it seemed a little odd.

If you aren’t a fan of trying to create the best individual player, season mode is back again this year. While last year’s version was very basic, this year allows you to play multiple seasons – however I wouldn’t call it a franchise mode in the least.

Gameplay hasn’t changed dramatically from last year’s game. Fans of High Heat will be pleased to learn that you can guess the pitch and the hitting area, just like last year. An extra difficulty level has been added for an extra challenge. You can use a standard swing or a power swing. The batter animations are very good and if you are swinging high and inside at a low and outside pitch, it looks very awkward – as it should. The pitcher/batter interface is one of the better ones I’ve used. Reading breaking pitches can be easy – or difficult depending on the pitcher.

I was impressed with the gameplay – there are walks and strikeouts and not a lot of balls in play on the first pitch. The biggest issue with gameplay is control in the outfield. As is common with many baseball games, the player closest to the ball is not always the best fielder to pick up the ball. Quite often, the system selects the center fielder to run half way across the outfield when it makes more sense for the left fielder to play the ball. As is always the case you are playing guide the player to the ball circle to catch the ball. It’s not a bad system but in MLB 06 it is a challenge because the ball circle may not be where the ball ends up – it all depends on the difficulty level. You’ll have a ‘general’ radius circle and a ‘ball’ circle. It’s a neat idea, but it still assumes you can move your guy to that general direction. When a ball is moving fast into the outfield, it seems like your player has a great way to overcome sometimes.

You can choose to pitch using the ‘golf meter’ or the traditional cursor pitch method. It’s a nice touch to see that the ‘old’ methods of playing baseball games are available and that you aren’t just stuck with the pitch meter.

You can visit the mound and there is a bullpen to warm up pitchers. There are six sliders to change the difficulty of the game for both the player and your opponent. Tweakers will be somewhat disappointed by only having six tweaks, but it’s certainly better than nothing.