Super Mega Baseball 4 is out now, the first EA Sports-published game in Metalhead’s “simulation-style gameplay, arcade-style presentation” series. The same fictional rosters are still intact with new retired MLB players added, so the video thumbnail above is Bartolo Colon vs. Babe Ruth, naturally.
First impressions from just a couple hours on the PC version (I have a physical copy of the PS5 version on the way too):
- Gameplay feels nearly identical to me, which is a good thing.
- I think the fielders were scaled down to a slightly more realistic level for the field dimensions, then made faster to keep things balanced. If I had one complaint about old Super Mega Baseball games, it often felt like your infielders were rooted to the spot and had to dive to get to anything to their left or right. That seems improved this year.
- The real-life player likenesses (or maybe caricatures would be a better word) are okay but not great. You can see a few dozen examples in the video above. They feel more like a mod that used in-game character customization tools to make a bunch of old players than a fully professional take on these guys. And there seem to be personality types attached to each player which are sometimes way off: Joe Mauer’s insane grinning wild-man energy feels really odd, for example, while other players have relatively calm animations.
- The menu navigation is brutal, which has been a hallmark of the series for some reason. Starting a new exhibition game and doing some simple things like picking a team are weirdly unintuitive, a shame for a game like this that’s got some broad “bring your dad in to play a game” appeal to it.