Once in a while it seems that a sports franchise will attempt some kind of radio show or halftime show or some other way of enhancing the realism of your season/franchise mode. FIFA World Cup Brazil was a recent example of this, as that game’s radio show would chime in after you played some matches, providing rough detail on the games played. That was one school of thought on this sort of show, as the radio spot there featured informal conversation that sounded natural but didn’t really have a lot of detail. They would talk about the teams who had played, so that was cool, but there never was any player depth or discussion on big plays or things like that.

MLB 15 The Show goes the other way, creating a radio show that sounds something like a “Mad Libs” version of a sports highlight show that you might hear on ESPN radio or any local sports talk radio station. It takes the form of a score update bumper that those channels often have, where host Justin Allegri will read off all of the previous day’s happenings. Each of these spots has a similar format, with Allegri running down all of the scores in order (starting with your team) and then adding in some supplemental detail.

The stitching in the audio is fairly obvious, but it is cool that they went with the all-or-nothing approach. Allegri will read out team names, player names, stat lines and other little comments about the teams in question. Much like a standard sports radio bumper, he’ll usually summarize the score and what happened, and then he might talk about Madison Bumgarner giving the bullpen the day off by pitching a complete game. Or maybe he’ll babble about Robinson Cano having four hits in a game or Jose Reyes “making history” by hitting for the cycle.

The radio show does start to repeat itself fairly quickly, especially if you listen to several spots in a row. There are only so many ways that Allegri can tee up the scores for you, but the developers have tried their best to mask this by having a few different adjectives and descriptors for certain situations. Still, Allegri’s intros for cities and specific match-ups don’t have much variety, and that probably should be addressed in subsequent versions of the feature.

It is cool that Allegri will talk about certain contextual things during the season, like where a team is in the standings or if a player is a league leader (or among the leaders) for a particular stat category. I thought those moments added a bit of extra detail, but I’d like to hear more of that. He also commented on a trade I made (Dustin Ackley for Jon Niese), and he usually provides those comments after he’s read out the team score for that particular day. He’ll say something like “And other news out of Seattle….”

Admittedly, it was a bit hard to discover this radio show at all, as the developers don’t really tell you how to go about it. It can be accessed in season, franchise and Road to the Show, and I had to get through spring training before I could hear the show. Once you play/sim through a day and advance, you’ll hear the audio start up. A segment usually goes for about two minutes.

What’s here is an interesting first foray into this sort of feature, but as always, more detail is needed in the analysis, more variety is needed in the verbiage, and even the audio stitching could be better. I found it cool to listen to the show once in a while, but hearing it after every game can sort of remove the charm.

As some have said, a logical extension for this feature might involve audio highlights or video highlights of specific plays. Much like how ESPN or other stations/channels would do this, you could have the scores and stats being read out by Allegri, and then it could kick it to an actual highlight that the game has simulated or that even has some faux commentary. To me, that would really hammer home the realism, especially if it had enough variety. Most players are going to be primarily interested in their own franchise or whatever, but seeing other league happenings come to life, beyond text simulation, really helps with the immersion.

Bottom Line

It’s hard to say whether Sony will take this feature any further or just tweak the names and numbers each year. It’s a decent effort (and different approach) for this sort of thing, but I don’t think many will place it high up on their priority list. I feel the radio show could be really cool if they put in a bunch of effort, but it’s hard to say whether that effort would be worth the time and money investment.