I’ve had sometime to explore the latest edition of Out of the Park, perhaps one of the most highly regarded sports titles here at Operation Sports. Each year, OOTP seems to take small but meaningful steps toward being the most comprehensive and realistic baseball sim available.

Here are some quick thoughts after a week with Out of the Park 15.

Interface

The most striking change is a refined interface. The visual “theme” of the game is a minimalistic and “flat” look, which really makes OOTP feel like a fresh and modern title. This also helps things look a little less cluttered.

The interface also makes much better use of real estate, since it is now designed for widescreen. On my 27-inch iMac I can easily see all of my organization’s teams on one screen, which is very helpful when it comes to roster organization.

Some commonly used items are in different places than they were in 13 and 14, but the general organization of the game seems logical and won’t take long-time users too long to adjust.

International Teams/ Ratings

I haven’t had much change to delve into the added international teams, but they are present and look pretty authentic. Assuming you include them in your game, they mesh nicely with the overall “universe.” You’ll see the posting board right next to the free agents, and it’s pretty simple to access these other team’s rosters. I did see news reports of players moving to the Japan league, so it seems as if they seamlessly integrated with player movement. To clarify, international leagues have been present for a while, but the new additions don’t seem to have messed anything up. I also didn’t notice much slow down when simming, even though I included many international leagues.

One of the nice improvements to the “universe” is adjustments to the ratings system. You can elect to have all ratings, worldwide, adjust to your primary league--in most cases, the MLB. This is really helpful when it comes to scouting or signing players from abroad.

Speaking of ratings, another new feature I’ve found useful is the ability to adjust ratings by position. This takes some thinking and mental adjustment to really understand, but I think it will be valuable to players who take the game seriously. With this feature turned on, you will need to think about players in comparison to their position, not league wide; if you constantly use the “shop player” options and then just grab the highest rated player, you may be overlooking better players at deeper positions. Again, I think this is super useful, but it does require some thought and adjustment.

3-D

One of the disappointments with this preview copy is that 3-D is not working as it should just yet. According to the release notes, it is still being patched, so I wasn’t surprised by the frequent crashes. However, I would have loved to see how the 3-D looks and operates; what brief glimpses I see prior to the game crashing look really good, especially for OOTP’s first attempt at a 3-D game screen. We are told this will be working when the game launches, and given OOTP Development's track record, there's no cause for alarm on the 3-D features.

Final Thoughts

While my time with this preview copy has been brief, it’s been very enjoyable. Every year, Out of the Park seems to get better, not the “back of the box” method employed by some AAA titles, but in meaningful and useful ways. I am very excited for the final release, which should fix the 3-D issues.