MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

[SoxFan01605]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Thanks for the impressions Jim

I'm thinking I might have to run with the Nats again this year. I dig the new blue alternates, and I can't wait to see that stadium under the new lighting!

[Scottdau]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Thanks for the impressions Jim

I'm thinking I might have to run with the Nats again this year. I dig the new blue alternates, and I can't wait to see that stadium under the new lighting!

That jersey is freaking sweet. I love the red, white and blue in the DC.

[Blzer]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

I guess I'll give more "factual" impressions than I did. This is all from memory and some of it could be pretty off, if not completely wrong. But hell, it was a long day yesterday.



Game 1

My first game started off to be Reds (CPU) @ Giants (me), night time start. This is a traditional "first game" that I have done since All Star Baseball 2003, don't ask me why the Reds. I issued a single to the first batter with Lincecum, instantly seeing the smoother framerate and seeing a nice new look to the pitching meter (I saw it as a lefty for a month with that demo!). The next batter I threw the first pitch on the inside half as a fastball for a ball, and something I haven't seen before, Molina didn't get an entire glove on it and it was a passed ball! Not wild pitch mind you... passed ball. It sort of deflected off then went back, which was pretty cool IMO. I don't believe they got any more production and I batted. I recall Gonzalez booting one trying to hurry a throw and I think I also hit a double (run didn't score), then left them stranded to end the inning.

I had work after this so I left the game running, but when my friend found out I had the game after work, we quit the game and fired up another one.


Game 2

Now I'm a Red Sox fan, but this guy is a Red Sox fan. When he found out that finally The Show rated Sox #1 and Yankees below Boston, he was giddier than when he heard I got the game. To test the team's true skill (or was it his ability?) I matched up against him as the Yankees, mostly because I wanted to check out the new stadium. And wow, when I really got a chance to sit down and watch the game instead of skipping cut scenes because of work approaching, it just looked amazing. The stadiums and lighting are phenomenal living, breathing aspects of this game that get well-deserved praise from even the in-game commentators.

So as you read, he talked about The Show's rating history. Yes, he is an avid Show gamer, but for PS2 and PSP, more so PSP. Because of the small screen and the stick's functionality maybe not being as proper, he never used the zone hitting so he always played on Rookie. In this game he felt like bumping it to All Star, but I don't think he knew he should have used the stick at all (people here will argue for and against that). He's also a guy that will literally swing at anything. I don't think he focuses enough to try and take close pitches, etc. I mean he'll swing at pitchouts and laugh at the fact after or he'll swing at balls that hit him before the player could animate in time and laugh about it. I didn't try to abuse that, just tried to paint corners. Oh, and he also uses auto baserunning. I have trouble sending individual baserunners in this game and that would be the only reason I would do the same, but I suck it up and try my best. Horror stories from both sides to come.

So there's the setup, and it was Sabathia vs Beckett. Beckett's curve = downright insane, you should have seen how low the first one ended up being with me swinging at it, it was somewhat embarrassing. I recall him collecting a couple more hits than me early on, though when I was still hitless and batting, Lowell made a costly throwing error for him to prolong an inning for Swisher to come up and jack a two-run homer into his bullpen. The replay was a wet dream, of course. I was then shut down for the next couple of innings and he managed to scratch across a run of his own with Bay and Drew collecting back-to-back doubles.

By the way, he told me early on that Lowell is his kryptonite when it comes to clutch situations. You know how there are some guys in games that simply just do it for you and others that don’t? He has the worst luck with Lowell. Bottom line, he grounded into two inning-ending double plays, once with the bases loaded and the other with first and third.

So the score was around 2 – 1 in the eighth, he had maybe nine hits and I had like three. Then my big bats started coming alive. It started with Nady at the bottom, belting a double in the left-center gap. I then intended to sac him over with Cano, but it was placed so perfectly that there was no play. He finally needs to make a change and puts in Okajima to face the top of the lineup. Damon comes up and his first pitch is a sinker on the inside which I whiff, but then there’s a cut scene of him moving around the outside of the box, feeling his chest area. We start laughing saying maybe he broke a rib, but then he tosses the bat down and really starts to feel it. Vasgersian takes note of it as Damon issues himself out of the lineup, with the game prompting me to make a substitution. I was in awe!

I replaced him with Cabrera, who strikes out after continuing Damon’s 0 – 1 count. Then comes Jeter already 0 – 3 with 2 strikeouts, and he chops it slowly to third. I try and bustle home, but Lowell finally comes through for him as I’m thrown out. So first and second with two gone and A-Rod up, who I believe was 0 – 3 on the night at that point as well. I decide to do my first all-or-nothing swing on a low-inside fastball and he bloops it (for a weaker word) down the right field line. My friend has Drew charging and attempts to dive, but misses as it goes by. “One run scores! Two runs score! Rodriguez stops at third with a couple of insurance runs and a triple to boot!” Flustered, my friend hits Teixeira right after for pretty much no reason, and Matsui gets one more hit to score Rodriguez. I close out the game with Rivera (damn nice cutter) and I win, 5 – 1.

The highlights of the game are a glory to watch, make sure you watch them every time. Awesome stuff.


Game 3
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So my friend and I decide to tap into the new sound features. We use the USB headset and head for the Sounds of The Show section. We started making rather generic cheers and jeers and inserted them into random players just so that we could hear them. Previewing the playback of the crowd ones are kind of weird, I’m not going to lie. The pitch inflection changes and everything, and it doesn’t really have that “crowd” feel. I may need to tap into that more and see how it is.

Anyway, I’m determined to check out PNC Park plus see if a scrub team can overtake a more-or-less dominant team, so it becomes a Mets – Pirates showdown at… I’d say roughly 3:20 start time.

The first thing that I notice is holy cow the sun beams on the field are bright! This is wicked awesome, looks just like a day game. I also noticed that the crowd was definitely emptier than that of the other game, pretty cool.

Starting the game, I retired his men three up three down, but not before hearing Delgado come up and someone in my rear left speaker yell, “YOU SUCK!” Ahh, such an awesome feature! I managed to do some damage in my first inning, getting on with Sanchez and getting Adam LaRoche to knock an RBI double in the left center gap. In fact, you’ll soon see that LaRoche was really my offense for the game (and not Andy).

After that it seemed like a pitcher’s duel. Yes, the lefties Santana and Maholm straight dealing (I think my friend retired 11 consecutive batters of mine before I finally reached base again). BTW Santana is very hard to pick up from the stretch, kind of makes it more like real life which is cool. It came to the point where we both agreed that his hits should be getting more pop as the Mets and versus my pitcher, so we brought him back down to Rookie. This is when he finally learned that All Star has an aiming system built into it. Anyway, he instantly started doing much better, hits left and right. David Wright absolutely crushed one, another one of his players shot one out to center and McClouth ran into the fence trying to catch it, Beltran hit it out of right after an “overrated” chant… it was all beautiful. Oh, and Santana got injured for him when the automated baserunning sent him home on a hot shot to short. He ran over my guy but injured himself meanwhile. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, I’m already getting bored of reading my own typing. I lost that game 11 – 2 (LaRoche had a second RBI double).

EDIT: Oh wait, the greatest two things I had to say about this game...

As I'm losing and the last inning is closing out, I swing and ground out with my first two batters on the first pitch. My next batter comes up and takes a ball, then I swing and miss the next pitch, and Hudler goes, "This is the last inning and you just saw the previous two batters ground out on the first pitch, so WHY ARE YOU SWINGING, YA QUACK?!" It was hilarious!

The second thing was that I noticeably saw less and less people in the stands in the 8th and 9th innings and you would start to see more people leaving their seats and walking up the steps. It was very cool!


Game 4

Our next game was Seattle (me) at Texas (him) at night, and the reflections off the glass out in center are wow! I moved Griffey over to Seattle but forgot to change the number from 17. We decided to try #5 starters to see the difference, and a difference there was. In short, I won 6 – 5. Griffey homered (I still think he intentionally served one up to me for Junior), Johjima homered, Branyan had a superb late game homer, and Shelton hit three doubles for me. Ichiro went an embarrassing 0 – 5 and my starter didn’t do much before he was injured in the 5^th inning (Vasgersian said that he made a note about him pitching through a soreness earlier but I guess I didn’t hear it).

Jarrod Saltalamachia was my friend’s offense, though. Two home runs and another RBI groundout. Damn Rookie level!


Game 5

My next game, I decided to create myself. It took me almost a half hour to do because of all the things you can do with the face! It looks like me though, which is cool. I moved myself to the Giants and it was a Red Sox @ Giants matchup, AT&T Park at night, Lester vs Lincecum. Renteria and Rowand tripled in the first inning (it was funny because Renteria did it as the announcers were talking about triple’s alley), but I feel that both could have been played better route-wise by my friend and I could have been held to doubles.

That was my offense for most of the game, and my friend took advantage of the few AT&T Park problems that had risen. The first one I listed in the Bugs & Glitches thread, the right field wall has a section at the top that should be a part of the wall but instead was called a home run.
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See the portion where it says Levis' Landing.

Anyway, the second issue was the wind was blowing out to right field 21 MPH. It gave him one of those balls hit off that part of the fence (I had one with Ishikawa), and a second one that cleared it that would have been a can of corn if the wind was blowing in instead like it normally does there. There was a weird time when the score was 8 – 3 and Campbell had a line about me being down by 4. Anyway I lost 9 – 3.


Game 6

The last game we played was St. Louis @ Anaheim at night, I was St. Louis and moved my created player over. Kennedy blasted one for me and Napoli hit two for him. I believe Cruz hit one for him as well. Now I’m just losing interest in typing this… I lost 8 – 6. It’s tough when he’s batting with Rookie haha.





Anyway, I just wanted to say (not in a negative tone, just to say) that the night progression is still a bit jumpy to dark (though seems longer to do), and if you see any framerate dips, they only occur in night games... they only occur in the field and ever so rarely, but most commonly off the bat if the camera has to do a minor swivel to left or right field. Day games are pristine.


Overall I am having so much fun with this game, and I'm just going to wait for the updated rosters plus and music files and such before I start a franchise. I'm considering other teams aside from the Giants as well, just because some of these stadiums (like the new Yankee Stadium) are so sick!

[Scottdau]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Did it hit the green roof Blzer? That is a HR. If it hit the where the writing was then yeah you got screw. That is not a HR. Unless they change it, but I doubt it.

[Flightwhite24]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Skywalker1...Roster control is a little different this year, but you can achieve the same results as last year. 40 man makes it logistically a little longer to do. To put Manny from FA to ML....

Go to ROSTER CONTROL

scroll down to LA

Go to PLAYER MOVEMENT

I swapped Manny for Eddy Cramm (who I believe is a dev, sorry Eddy)

ACCEPT ROSTER CHANGE

Go to MANAGE ROSTER

You'll see you have 26 men on your ML roster

I dropped Jason Repko from ML to minors

Press SQUARE to AUTO FIX lineups (this actually worked well, as it took Manny off the bench and put him in the third slot)

Then SAVE your roster so that you can use this roster with Manny on it when you start your franchise.

Thanks for this info. I have yet to hit a homer in 3 games. My Video Dodgers need POWER now!!!! Manny will be their in the end. Thanks again

[Blzer]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Did it hit the green roof Blzer? That is a HR. If it hit the where the writing was then yeah you got screw. That is not a HR. Unless they change it, but I doubt it.

Not the green, it was the wall (it is blue in this game, has some logo there). I replayed it to be sure, and it happened twice, unfortunately.

Actually, the wall is all messed up. I remember my friend driving one down the line with Ortiz, and I had it played perfectly with win to receive the carom (geometric physics state that blah blah blah angle theorems and what have you), but it rocketed pretty hard off between archways 1 and 2 and went sort of back toward the infield instead of to me playing to the right of it. I'm not sure what's up with that wall's programming.

[Scottdau]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Not the green, it was the wall (it is blue in this game, has some logo there). I replayed it to be sure, and it happened twice, unfortunately.

Actually, the wall is all messed up. I remember my friend driving one down the line with Ortiz, and I had it played perfectly with win to receive the carom (geometric physics state that blah blah blah angle theorems and what have you), but it rocketed pretty hard off between archways 1 and 2 and went sort of back toward the infield instead of to me playing to the right of it. I'm not sure what's up with that wall's programming.

Too hard to that. Maybe PS4. Any ways did the water shoot up?

[Blzer]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

Too hard to that. Maybe PS4. Any ways did the water shoot up?

It did not. Also, my friend's ball "went into the cove" but there was no such recognition either. In fact, on the replay I think I heard the bounce off a surface, so the water doesn't quite have its own form of detection yet. Maybe next year.

Just wanted to throw this out there, as I was making my last post I had my game on resume at the Nationals Stadium. Hey jim I don't know if you've done this yet but while you're waiting the PA announcer will at one point talk about the presidential races they have at the stadium. He even announced the names. I wonder if SCEA had to get a license for that?

[Scottdau]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

It did not. Also, my friend's ball "went into the cove" but there was no such recognition either. In fact, on the replay I think I heard the bounce off a surface, so the water doesn't quite have its own form of detection yet. Maybe next year.

Just wanted to throw this out there, as I was making my last post I had my game on resume at the Nationals Stadium. Hey jim I don't know if you've done this yet but while you're waiting the PA announcer will at one point talk about the presidential races they have at the stadium. He even announced the names. I wonder if SCEA had to get a license for that?

Oh man that weak. I like the water shooting out. Oh well. Yeah they said the water was on tap for this year, but it just didn't happen this year they said maybe next year.

[psykatek]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

In
Chavez
Loewen
Richmond

No Castro

Shouldn't Jason Lane be in the game? I don't think he was around in 1994, and he certainly has ML experience. Just curious...

[jim416]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

For you swing only types, I'm on VET as I'm taking screen shots. I'm just pressing X and hitting the ball all over the place, not necessarily hits, but making contact. Give that a try plus sliders.

[brunnoce]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

For you swing only types, I'm on VET as I'm taking screen shots. I'm just pressing X and hitting the ball all over the place, not necessarily hits, but making contact. Give that a try plus sliders.

jim, do u think that will do it? or ull need to up the level to keep a realistic batting AVR?

[nemesis04]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

I'm not sure who the Padres fans here (and I haven't tried every stadium yet), but at PETCO Park the ball seems to be much darker for night games. I understand that it's in the shadow and what not but it still is missing that whiteness, it's looking kind of gray and is hard to pick up. Plus, the other stadiums don't seem to have it that dark.

I'll do a further investigation. It's not terrible, but I know someone already didn't like the evening look of games for the sake of it potentially being harder to pick up the ball. Like I said, I can see it just fine... but it's noticeably darker, more true to the shadows though a little exaggerated.

Actually, the framerate seems to be better at PETCO for night games than others, feels like a day game's smooth framerate.

Too much Blackburne rubbing mud?

[jim416]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

jim, do u think that will do it? or ull need to up the level to keep a realistic batting AVR?

Brunn, haven't a clue yet as the exhibition games are set to default. I haven't really fooled around with gameplay as I already did that up at SCEA, but not to worry. Myself, probably AllStar (with sliders?????), maybe HOF?????? Haven't decided yet.

[DodgerFanatic2K3]

Re: MLB 09: The Show - Impressions

For you swing only types, I'm on VET as I'm taking screen shots. I'm just pressing X and hitting the ball all over the place, not necessarily hits, but making contact. Give that a try plus sliders.

I wouldn't adjust sliders just yet :wink:


I played on All-Star and got no hitted by Peavy then came back and tagged C.Y. in game 2 and damaged their bullpen just using (Swing Only)

I'm going to face all ACE's in the rotation and see if it's just really hard to get hits against true ACE pitchers using (Swing Only)

BTW... in that 2nd game I got 3 doubles (2 GAPPERS & 1 DOWN THE LINE) 1 triple (GAP SHOT) and 3 Hr's (1 to LF w/KEMP & 2 TO RF w/Loney & DeWitt) just using X with no aiming