Baseball Mogul 2009 Review Posted.
 

Score = 8.5

http://www.operationsports.com/review.php?id=420

Thanks for reviewing the game so soon. I'm off to read now.

I'm surprised. I'd have expected a much lower rating given the product's history.

That being said, even if it were rated 11, I wouldn't touch that game if it were given away with a free Chipotle to boot.

I found it much better than I expected it to be, to be honest. I didn't have high hopes, but it definitely surprised me. It doesn't have the depth of OOTP, but it does what it does pretty doggone well, from what I could tell. Of course, the problem with doing a review is that you get a few days to poke and prod, but not weeks to go deeply into every feature in the game. At a high level, it does well. It still stands as the only game I've played that requires essentially no house rules to be challenging.

Did I also read somewhere that you'll be doing a review of OOTP 9 this week?

I'm helping out with a Preview. Someone else at OS was already on tap to do it before I came on board. There will be a Preview early next week, and then we'll do a Review of it after the first patch or two.

Patch? What patch? :D

I'm still having a blast with BM 09 as I'm in 2010 after finally making it to the playoffs with the Cardinals in 2009 and then the Mets sweep us 3-0.

:banghead:

It's still the only game with real rosters that are great right out of the box and much like FOF and FBB, I can rattle off months in one sitting.

I'll dig into ootp and my fictional universe sometime in the near future, but BM 09 has been worth every penny imho.

Btw, great review Ben!

With OOTP, they have real rosters now. I believe this was added in OOTP8. But there begining rosters suffer, they don't have real salaries.

One thing I like about BM2k9 is that Clay has implemented HoustonGM and FrenchRedsox rosters in them and they were included in the first patch or two :)

Anyway. I am off to play OOTP9. Great game, thou for the Fun factor, Baseball Mogul is more fun and more addicting. OOTP seems actually easier then OOTP.... :)

The MLB rosters in OOTP are horrible, so I'm purely playing fictional. Still, I find myself playing BM everyday and might play ootp a tad here and there since its release.. which bothers me since I was so pumped for the release.

I love the ease of BM.. what can I say?

agree :)

Anyone have any observations on how the stats (averages, home runs, ERA) hold up after a decade or so of play?

Also, is the free agent market clearing well each season, or are there players sitting around unhired (or available dirt cheap) at the beginning of the season?

Given Ben's review, I'm tempted to pick this one up, but those two issues have driven me nuts with this series, and too many times I've bought the game only to find out that the stats go south after a decade, or that top free agents sit in free agency unhired.