In addition to the career and season modes, there’s also online play and a new King of The Diamond mode. The King of the Diamond mode is an interesting mini game, which you can also play online. You are given a specific amount of time to score as many runs as possible. Hitting certain targets will allow you to increase your time, while other targets will decrease your time. It’s a challenging and fun little game.
The online functionality is very well done. You can even download news from your favorite teams for offline viewing if you so choose. There’s a whole IM functionality and you can even see if someone is playing the PS2 version of the game. Unfortunately in my testing I found it very hard to finish a full game – whether it is my internet connection, my opponent’s connection or something else, it was difficult. I did not have this problem with King of the Diamond online.
Audio is a three man booth this time around and is still very good. The banter between the three is very impressive however sometimes the commentary will lag behind the actual game action – especially in home runs. The ball has left the park and you can see it bouncing around over the wall, but yet the announcer is still saying “that ball is…….” as if he is unable to tell if it’s fair or foul or inside the park. It’s not ten seconds behind, but you do notice it; however it doesn’t affect the actual gameplay itself.
Graphically the game looks pretty good. Lots of defensive animations are a plus; however when the game goes into ‘wide’ mode – by that I mean a pop fly or something that requires the game to pan out – things don’t look so good. Up-close the game looks great but far away – not so much.
Many years, fans of baseball games ask companies to just fix what was broken last year and keep the rest as is. MLB 06 The Show goes one better, not only fixing what was there last year but adding a more indepth season mode and a new career mode. Yes, we can still dream of online leagues and a real franchise mode, but what we have here is very impressive, and gives you thanks that there’s no exclusive license in baseball.
