Is the handheld version worth your time and money?

The daily grind of a baseball player is much less enticing than most believe. The constant repetition of doing the same thing every day; the bus rides that last hours upon hours; the crazy and zany promotions in a Minor League Baseball stadium. These are just a few of the obstacles one must work through before suiting up for The Show.

But that daily grind in real life is nothing compared to the daily grind one must endure when it comes to console gaming. SCEA has been attempting to successfully recreate a virtual world where you can experience all of these instances and more: MLB The Show’s Road to the Show game mode. It’s a challenge to be able to sit down and play 162 games, let alone do it all in your living room on a consistent basis. However, the game has changed: SCEA has introduced cross-platform saveing to help gamers continue their storied success between a consolse and a handheld. It’s a true gamer’s dream, and something that takes what is nothing less than a port and turns it into a worth-while purchase for the baseball gamer on the go.

That’s why MLB 14: The Show for the PS Vita is worth your money, even if you’re planning on purchasing the PS3 and/or PS4 version. The grind of a real baseball player may be different than your grind in RTTS, but the thoughts are the same – you want to do as much as you possibly can in the allotted amount of time you are given. The Vita allows you to play a few games right before bed, simulated or not. It let’s you take your career to work so you can shuffle around stats and attributes. Then once you get home, feel free to launch the next game on your PS3.

MLB 14: The Show on the PS Vita is an almost-exact port of the PS3 version, which earned a solid review for the umpteenth time at Operation Sports. The great gameplay is there in all of the right places: pitching, hitting, fielding. The graphics are even on par with the home console’s version, but are slightly behind due to the limits of the handheld system (this will all change on May 6). But the point of this version of the game isn’t because of the damn-near identicalness of the two different systems, it’s the ability to save your career and franchise on the Vita and continuing it on a home console.

If you’ve been battling back-and-forth about picking up The Show for the Vita, you should simply stop and go pick it up now. You’ll use it much more than you think – I can attest to that fact. Cross-saves within The Show should only be the beginning. Assuming Madden NFL and NBA 2K ever want to serious effort into the handheld market, this should definitely be on their radar.

What are your thoughts about cross-saving between platforms?