You have to feel a little bad for 2K Games. As many sports gamers will recall, 2K Games bought the “exclusive 3rd party license” for baseball videogames, which means unless the manufacturer of the videogame console makes a baseball game, your only option is the 2K Games version of baseball. While their game has improved, they have still left the door open for Sony, and Sony’s game is miles ahead of the competition.

MLB 07: The Show continues to build on their success over the last couple of years. Rather than reinventing the game, Sony has decided to keep the core of last year’s game intact, and that’s definitely not a bad thing. The depth of the game continues to increase, creating a much more fun and replayable experience.

This year’s game has seven ‘big’ new features according to the developers. In my opinion, the biggest and best new feature is the Road to the Show (RTTS) mode which takes a career mode one step further. In this mode, you’ll start off as a spring training invitee and have to prove you have the skills to make it to “The Show,” which is the Major Leagues. Usually, you won’t make it out of the gate, so you’ll have to start in the minor leagues instead. During these modes, you’ll have goals from your manager and if you attain them you earn points which you can then use to improve your attributes and make you a better player. In addition to that, you will also have some basic RPG-like elements. For example, if you’re a pitcher and all of a sudden your manager takes you out of the game, you can complain to the manager after the game. Based on your discussion with the manager, he’ll apologize to you, give you some positive feedback or be so mad you could miss your next start. While the response seems rather random, it is fun to have that option.

What’s great about the Road To The Show mode is that you feel like you’re a ball player who cares about being the best you can be – while it seems rather selfish in such a team sport, it is important to be the best so you can get to the Show. Personally, I would much rather play a mode like this than controlling all of the minutia in franchise mode. The best comparison of RTTS mode is that of Madden’s Superstar mode. The difference is that RTTS is implemented much better. You always fast forward to the action involving your character as opposed to having to sit through the whole game in Madden. This makes for a much faster and enjoyable experience. The only drawback of the game is that the computer does not trade much if it all.

Speaking of franchise mode, it is here and there are plenty of things that you can control. Thankfully, if you’d rather focus on the in game aspects, you can change the options you don’t want to adjust to CPU and you don’t have to worry about them. Be forewarned however, the CPU can and does do some head scratching things in this area. If you want everything done right, you’ll have to do it yourself.

The gameplay in MLB 07 is just phenomenal. The pitcher/batter interface brings High Heat to mind, with its very easy to use guess pitch/guess location model. Thankfully you only press a button to swing, which I prefer. When pitching, your catcher will suggest a pitch and a pitch location, which can come in very handy. He’s not always right and of course, just because you aim inside doesn’t mean you’ll throw inside. Another new feature of MLB are umpire personalities – which means depending on who’s behind the plate a strike may not always be a strike from game to game – just like in real life. It’s a nice touch.

Speaking of touches, there are so many in this game to mention that make the baseball experience complete: on one double play attempt, my second baseman dropped the ball when trying to throw it to first. The umpire at second correctly pointed to the bag, showed that the drop occurred during the transfer and called the runner out. Its little things like this that makes the game so enjoyable. Other touches include the ball physics, which are just fantastic – the bite a breaking ball has is just awesome and when a ball is hit you really can tell if you were jammed and it’s easy to predict where the ball is hit – which makes fielding much easier than the competition.