A Casual Fan's Take On MLB 11: The Show's New Control Scheme - Mos1ted's Blog

Mos1ted's Blog

A Casual Fan's Take On MLB 11: The Show's New Control Scheme

Posted on December 16, 2010 at 10:07 AM.

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Let me get this out of the way first: I am not a baseball guy. In fact, I couldn't name off 20 MLB players' full names and positions if you paid me, yet every year I have the latest edition of MLB: The Show in my library. It's not that I hate baseball; I think it's a fun sport to play. It's just too boring for me to watch on a consistent basis. The only time I really get excited enough to watch baseball is during the playoffs, and even then, that's assuming there is nothing else more interesting to watch on TV during that time. (I did enjoy Ken Burns' latest baseball documentary BTW)

Sometimes I don't get myself. I buy MLB: The Show every year, but I can count on 2 hands the number of times I've actually sat down to play a full 9 inning game. It's not that the game is bad. In fact, I think MLB 10: The Show nailed its respective sport better than any other sports game released before it (until NBA 2K11 showed up). I just don't understand the nuances of baseball enough to commit myself to RTTS or Franchise mode with any longevity.

After reading the ESPN preview for MLB 11: The Show, it finally donned on me: it wasn't my lack of knowledge on baseball strategy that kept me from putting a lot of time into the game; it was a fresh perspective to the gameplay that I needed to commit more to actually playing rather than the game just sitting idly on the shelf. I'll admit it; I came this close to buying MLB 2K10 last year. It wasn't because I thought it was the better game; I just assumed that their alternate control scheme would keep me interested longer. After playing the MLB 2K10 demo, I just didn't find their control scheme as intuitive as I would have liked. I think the premise was good, but the execution just wasn't there for me; it could have just been me and my lack of any true baseball knowledge or tactical sense. The world will never know. Anyway, I decided to pick up MLB 10 last year instead but only because some poor kid was selling his copy on Craigslist for $20 just 2 months after the game released. (I say poor kid because he probably didn't realize he could have gotten at least $40 for it)

THE CONTROLS

The new control scheme is definitely the most exciting aspect of MLB 11: The Show for me. The other features sound nice as well, but I doubt I will pay them much attention to even appreciate them fully.

To start things off, the new batting control sound like it's going to be difficult and that it will pay to know the proper mechanics on how to swing a bat...YES! I suck at batting in real life. I'm impatient. I lack the hand-eye coordination needed to hit a speeding baseball, and I swing at everything. I have zero discipline at the plate. While batting in previous MLB's wasn't too difficult for even an amateur like me, I felt it was the most boring aspect of the game. Simply pressing a button to swing the bat was not my definition of immersion. I got so bored with that aspect of the game that I just swung at everything (just like in real life) to speed the at bat up so I could get back to pitching. It wasn't that I was trying to lose the game on purpose; I just felt that my defense could keep the game close enough that maybe I could buckle down in the later innings to gain or secure the lead. That strategy rarely worked for me, if ever. MLB 11's new batting scheme looks like I'll be spending a lot of time in the virtual batting cage. Maybe, just maybe, learning to get this aspect of the game down will keep me more focused during the real games when I'm up at bat. Here's hoping that this will be the case.

By far, my favorite aspect of previous MLB's was the pitching. It's something about striking a batter out caught looking that's so invigorating (that's the backwards K thing right?). I also loved how each umpire had his own interpretation of the strike zone, although I hated it during critical moments of the game when I really needed a strike called instead of a ball and vice versa. But then again, you see pitchers, batters, and managers arguing with the umps all the time about bad calls and strikes, so I'm glad this feature is definitely in the game.

The new pitching control scheme sounds cumbersome at first. I can see it's going to take a lot trial and error for me to get as comfortable with the new pitching control as the old one. That being said, it's still a welcomed addition by me. It looks like this scheme will help differentiate pitchers even more than the old one, and I'm all about differentiating the average pitchers from the great ones.

While ESPN's Jon Robinson wasn't exactly in love with the new fielding controls, I think I might actually like it. Fielding was my second favorite aspect of previous MLB's, but I think this control scheme just might be a more intuitive option. I would imagine that every fielder plays out in his head exactly how and where he's going to throw the ball as it's coming towards him. Now us players must think the exact same way. I'm just hoping the animation hiccup he was referring to if your fielding timing is off isn't as big of an eye sore as it sounds on paper. The good news is that the producers are still tweaking this aspect of the game.

All in all, it looks like yet again I will be purchasing the latest MLB game. Unless my money is really low come early March, I will be buying this one at launch (sorry poor saps, you won't be getting my $20 this next year). I told myself after this year's baseball season ended that I wasn't going to buy a new baseball game next year. I don't follow the sport closely enough to care about updated rosters, and I didn't want to go down that same path of repetition of buying the game only for it to seat most of the year. It looks like MLB 11 is going to be bucking many trends when it releases this Spring.

EDIT: I am disappointed with the news however that Move Support will only be for the Homerun Derby. I was really hoping to play the entire game that way. Baseball is just one of those games that works well with that kind of set up.