Review by: Todd Brakke

If you’re a longtime fan of Out of the Park Baseball, you already know most of what you’re getting with this year’s release. If you’re not, and if you’ve got any interest at all in trying one of these so-called spreadsheet games, this is perhaps the deepest, most authentic statistics-based baseball sim you’re going to find. Yes, there are competitive titles out there, but none of them can touch the Out of the Park franchise, and with Out of the Park X the game has seen its best iteration yet. The only question you have to ask yourself, especially if you purchased Out of the Park 9, is if you want to drop $40 on a game that isn’t an immediately obvious improvement from last year’s game.

That isn’t meant to imply that there aren’t improvements. In particular a newly redesigned pitching system that rates pitchers not only based on existing ratings like Stuff, Control and Movement, but also each individual pitch in their repertoire. Individual pitch ratings has been a much needed addition for a long time now and it really adds something to the game when making decisions about how to handle both young pitchers--he has a killer fastball, but is that changeup Major League ready? Do I offer my 35-year vet a big contract or does it look like his slider has lost its edge?

Also new is the concept of in-game Widgets. When playing out a game live you can activate a BNN Widgets tab that produces a customizable in-game view, in which each component of the interface (Scoreboard, Pitcher Info, Play-by-Play, etc.) can be hidden, resized or dragged around the screen. These aren’t really widgets in the sense of how you might be used to them at an operating system level, like Windows or MacOS, but they do provide you with a way to tweak the in-game visuals that wasn’t available before.

Unfortunately, the UI, which replicates typical Windows functionality without using actual Windows objects, continues to be just a touch less snappy than interacting with OS-native objects; this is particularly true of these new Widgets. The sooner OOTP abandons its own UI engine in favor of using built-in operating system objects, the more efficient the experience of playing the game will feel. The in-game widgets are nice and all, but it would be so much nicer to have that kind of functionality --be able to open multiple windows, resize them, and move them around the screen-- when handling all facets of managing your team or league.

Other notable new features include minor league disabled lists, which makes managing injuries at the minor league level far more efficient than in past editions, noticeably improved team management AI, and a new arbitration system in which players now make their demand and allow the team to set a maximum offer or let the player become a free agent. If you do offer arbitration the game then determines which amount is awarded to the player. You can also offer your own free agent-eligible players arbitration so that, should they leave via free agency, you can receive draft pick compensation for their loss. This is a huge boon to the off-season game. All of these new features do add to the game and, admittedly, once you’ve got ‘em it would be tough to go back to a previous edition; even the additional new writing for the in-game play-by-play and news stories adds to the game’s flavor. But if you’re making the decision of whether or not to upgrade from Out of the Park 9, you do have to ask yourself if these features are worth $40 out of pocket.