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- I have a Sega Dreamcast coming in the mail to me tomorrow. If the power stays on as the tropical storm passes over us, I’ll delve for the first time into Sega’s American and Japanese baseball series, World Series Baseball 2K and Pro Yakyuu Team o Tsukurou! (Exclamation belongs to the title, not me. That art style on the latter looks hard to get used to.) I really want to get a SCART cable rather than composite before I record any gameplay, so these games might not show up on the YouTube too awfully soon.
- Turns out the PS2 had a lot of baseball games. I picked up Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2, 3, and 5 for cheap. Sometimes I feel like all I do is record Konami baseball games (they’re great, don’t get me wrong), but I’ve still got a ton left to get through.
Thoughts
What’s going on with Moments in MLB The Show? Moments are short scenarios with a specific goal, the kind of mode that’s been in tons of baseball games going back to at least the PS1 era. It feels like Moments have become a bigger and bigger part of Diamond Dynasty every year in The Show, but they’re so weirdly inflexible.
A partial list of weird things about Moments:
- The Home Run Derby Moments are baffling. In a game that has a real Home Run Derby mode, these Moments are hacked together out of a real game situation. All the Derby contestants are slapped together on a team, facing a pitcher who throws slow fastballs with a full defense behind him, and if you make three outs, you have to pitch and get three outs on defense before you can hit again. If this is the only way to represent the Home Run Derby in Moments, then you know there are some serious technical limitations on what they can do.
- There are no defensive Moments. Why can’t you reproduce a great home run robbery or a diving catch in a Moment? Road to the Show has defense.
- Certain moments, like ones that require steals or RBIs, can be painful due to bad luck with the random events that happen around you. Is it not possible to pre-program the situation for each at-bat? After the first at-bat, everything that happens in-between your control is randomly generated.
- It’s a lot more work for little benefit I’m sure, but the historical Moments always bother me because every player besides one or two is from the current rosters. I’m not sure how licensing works for former players (OOTP Baseball somehow gets away with including everyone from every year) but I would prefer either former player names with no likenesses, or all fictional names and likenesses in these Moments.
- Pitchers hit in American League games up through The Show 21 (They fixed that problem this year with the Universal DH, right? They must have).
It seems like Moments were just bolted onto the code awkwardly somewhere years ago. Now they’ve become a huge part of the promotional schedule and post-release content of The Show, but there’s no way to change this old, awkward, inflexible mode.
The larger issue is, Moments make the game seem worse than it is. Replaying the same at-bat over and over trying to hit a home run is frustrating, because The Show is all about plate discipline and smartly reacting to the pitch you get. And pitching Moments are usually so easy that some of the goals have become insane, like pitch six no-hit innings. The currency and card rewards make Moments really tempting, but literally every other mode is better at showcasing what makes The Show a good game.
I’m sure that big games like this, especially with annual release schedules, are like huge ships that you can turn only a little at a time, and with great effort and coordination. But it seems like you could do more with this mode. Does every Moment have to be nothing more than a savestate that plays out randomly when you aren’t at bat or on the mound?