When it comes to baseball (the sport and the video game) you either get it, or you don't. It's the most difficult team sport to talk up to non-fans. But for the faithful, the ones who love America's past time even when it's a pitcher's duel, MLB 12: The Show provides the best baseball experience on consoles.

It should come as no surprise that The Show is a great game. After all, it's been excellent for years, and when the foundation is solid the developers can keep making smaller improvements. The Show continues its legacy of having the most realistic game of baseball around. Star players look great, with animations that fully capture their personalities. New subtle additions, like pitcher's and catcher's reactions to hits, add more emotion and drama to the game.

Ball rotation physics isn't the sexiest bullet point on The Show's new features, but it's one of those changes that become instantly noticeable when you play. The ball no longer operates in the neat little vacuum before, arcing in predictable parabolas straight into the outfielder's mitt. Now line drives can chop up, balls can lift or sink in the air, and the bases can send your baseball bouncing in a different direction. However, as is the case with most new additions to a sports game, it seems like the physics are turned up a bit too much (do balls really hit off third base that often?).

Pitching fans get a brand new control scheme for 2012: pulse pitching. Instead of the familiar pitch meter, a pulsating circle grows and shrinks in the strike box. Time your pitches when the circle is at its smallest for more accuracy and power. It's a simpler, faster way to do pitching, that still keeps the timing element of the other methods. And it does something every baseball game desperately need: makes every at-bat quicker.

The new Diamond Dynasty mode borrows a page from EA Sport's Ultimate Team, and allows you to create a hand-picked baseball team using custom players and superstars earned through in-game trading card packs. As a new game mode, Diamond Dynasty feels more like a game than something like Franchise or even Road to the Show. Because it's an online mode, you can trade/sell cards with other players and you're always competing against every other team. As an online-only mode, the coolness is contingent on how many people play it.


Franchise and Road to the Show stay largely the same as last year, with some small, but notable improvements. Smarter trade logic and more accurate lineups are things you probably won't notice (they tend to stand out when they're bad). Your RttS player finally gets the treatment he deserves, beginning as a Double-A starter and letting you get plenty of game time in right off the bat (baseball joke!).

Unfortunately The Show doesn't push ahead of the competition in terms of presentation. It's not that MLB 2K's presentation is so amazing (though 2K Sports sets the bar in terms of commentary), but rather that The Show's is not up to snuff. It is noticeably improved over last year's offering, but the dynamic between the announcers is weak and the delivery often falls flat.


For those of you with fancy TVs and peripherals, The Show features 3D TV and PlayStation Move support. This time, Move can be used for everything, including the admittedly fun batting, and the somewhat awkward pitching and fielding. However, the 3D TV support is cool. The Show features SimulView, where, instead of showing the game in 3D, it outputs two different signals. So if you and a friend are playing the game, one of you sees the game from the traditional batting perspective, and the other can see the pitching perspective, simultaneously. It's a gimmick, sure, but it's a cool gimmick.

The big feature Sony is touting for MLB 12 is the ability to transfer saves. You can upload a single save file, like a Franchise career or Road to the Show character, to "the cloud" and then download him to the console or Vita. It allows you to continue to play your saved game on the go, which is awesome… if you own both copies of the game. It's not a feature that's cool enough to warrant two purchases, but if you have to have baseball on your couch and on the go, score!

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