MLB '08: The Show Review

[Knight165]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

IMO you can't score...or should I say...you shouldn't score a game as high as THE SHOW when a major portion of the game is unreliable and poorly constructed...Now please try to tell me ONLINE play is not important...Whether someone plays online or not the IMPORTANCE of online play for all games CANNOT be denied.

So just like the reviewer has an opinion...So do I...I simply don't agree with the score...he mentions poor online play but where is the accountability for it in the score???

This review is a prime example of why gaming companies will not make any changes for the better regarding online play for the forseeable near future...Grading out as a strong B while neglecting a major portion of the game will not promote any changes. If I'm a producer I'm thinking...Our reviews are great despite our subpar online play...No need to change it, right???

A review...any review...should be constructed from the standpoint that the reviewer values every aspect of the game equally or at least sets a criteria where even areas that may not be of great interest to the reviewer are still judged with the same level of importance as those areas that are important to the reviewer.

OldSchool.

I understand where you are coming from...that each portion of the game should work...and properly...but I think you might be overestimating just how important online play really is .....and to how many people find it so important.
Yes... A LOT of people like to play online. That's a given.
But...if you tell people..."this is a great game...except the online sucks"
......and you tell them..." this game not so great...but the online is tremendous" Which game do you think most people will get? Seriously.
I'm a big fan of manage only mode. I think any game that doesn't have it takes a HUGE hit towards the "final score"...but that's for me.
Others understand it......and might like to try it.....but if it comes down to the game being great...but the manage only mode is subpar....they wouldn't think twice about not getting the game because of it.

I've played MAYBE 3 games online...in ALL the baseball games I've played.
I'm sure there are others here that haven't played the game outside season/franchise. I've heard you call that "BOOOORING".......so then you must realize that just like you don't look at some things as important in the game....others don't find your "essential" items to be as important as you do.
I'm just trying to break it to you nicely.

M.K.
Knight165

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Shoddy online was brought up 3 times; Once in the body, once in the conclusion and finally in the "Negatives". Every time it was mentioned, it got hit for being laggy. So online play was not "neglected" and the review is not "misleading."

If someone out there loves online play and their only intention was to play online, then I'd hope they would've read the portion about online play, saw that it wasn't refined, and passed on the game until it was fixed.

Matty,

With all due respect...I don't read a review to determine if I want to buy a game..Why?...because I don't value another man's opinion more than my own when it comes to making a decision on what I like or don't like.

A true knowledgable, veteran gamer is not gonna let a review decide for him if he wants to buy or play the game...Again, no disrespect to reviews because I read and enjoy them but its just some dudes opinion...An opinion thats no better or worse than mine...So why would I rely on someone else???..I never understood guys who decide to buy or not to buy a game based on a review.

Reviews for the most part are for the gaming companies to brag about meta-critic scores and pound their chest regarding how great their product is and well received by the community even when they know they released the game with defective areas that should have been dealt with prior release. Peter Moore touted Madden 08 as this great game due to the Meta-critic scores but in real life most gamers have been continually disappointed with that game since its inception to next gen.

So..in retrospect I don't need the review for me...I need the review to speak to the producers and let them know that the community is highly dissatisfied and concerned that certain areas have been continually, irresponsibly been neglected.

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

OldSchool.

I understand where you are coming from...that each portion of the game should work...and properly...but I think you might be overestimating just how important online play really is .....and to how many people find it so important.
Yes... A LOT of people like to play online. That's a given.
But...if you tell people..."this is a great game...except the online sucks"
......and you tell them..." this game not so great...but the online is tremendous" Which game do you think most people will get? Seriously.
I'm a big fan of manage only mode. I think any game that doesn't have it takes a HUGE hit towards the "final score"...but that's for me.
Others understand it......and might like to try it.....but if it comes down to the game being great...but the manage only mode is subpar....they wouldn't think twice about not getting the game because of it.

I've played MAYBE 3 games online...in ALL the baseball games I've played.
I'm sure there are others here that haven't played the game outside season/franchise. I've heard you call that "BOOOORING".......so then you must realize that just like you don't look at some things as important in the game....others don't find your "essential" items to be as important as you do.
I'm just trying to break it to you nicely.

M.K.
Knight165

But hopefully you realize that even though I may find your coveted "manage Mode" a waste...I want it to work and be as vibrant as the best parts of the game..Thats my point.

These consoles are BUILT on the premise of HIGH SPEED INTERNET and HD VISUALS...Now please explain to me how we all buy these consoles with the enticement of the HIGH SPEED, HD ERA but we come to find out that the sports games (worst of all) do not perform online any better than when we were all on 56K???

When we talk about next gen consoles...what are the areas of a next gen console that are MOST IMPORTANT???..Would anyone dare say ONLINE Connectivity isn't #1 or #2???

I disagree also with your assessment..Xbox LIVE has like 10 million customers that play online...Online is quite important..Its my opinion that gamers have become used to mediocrity...There is no way to voice your concerns to someone meaningful..Other than a few dudes on a forum like this who agree and/or disagree.

If you bought a new car and the air conditioner didn't work..would you be cool with the majority of people saying..."Air is not that important" ...I'll bet you wouldn't..You'd want the situation rectified.

[Knight165]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

When we talk about next gen consoles...what are the areas of a next gen console that are MOST IMPORTANT???..Would anyone dare say ONLINE Connectivity isn't #1 or #2???

To whom?
To the guy who is playing Battlefield?....or a like game that was pretty much constructed FOR online play?

Or to the guy playing The Show?....in which I can POSITIVELY say the game was not and hopefully never will be constructed as online play as it's most important element. I can pretty confidently say that franchise/season play is the most important thing to the majority of The Shows gamers and that review is weighted that way.

Most baseball gamers are looking for the long haul of the season.....the stats....the movement of players.....having to figure out who to plug in where when someone goes down for the season.

An online game for most Show players is a diversion. Maybe an extremely fun one....but probably not an essential one...and that's what I'm getting at.
I don't believe that the reviewer deducted even a fraction of a point for poor online play.......is he wrong in doing that?...probably....but I'll bet most of the guys who give their "score" here on O.S.(the O.S. members) never even thought about that either.
....so he is probably in line with the majority of guys here.

M.K.
Knight165

[jim416]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Well, if reviews aren't important to you, no offense, but, what's the beef? Online is messed up for you. So you want the score to be, I dunno, 6.5 and that changes things?

Not being smart in tone with this, as I understand your unhappiness with the online situation, but there's much more to this game than online. You say you don't value the review, but don't like the score. You don't value reviews, can't understand the score. Want the score lower, but reviews don't mean anything. You're angry at the online situation, understood, but you're sort of all over the place here.

[SoxChamp]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

To whom?
To the guy who is playing Battlefield?....or a like game that was pretty much constructed FOR online play?

Or to the guy playing The Show?....in which I can POSITIVELY say the game was not and hopefully never will be constructed as online play as it's most important element. I can pretty confidently say that franchise/season play is the most important thing to the majority of The Shows gamers and that review is weighted that way.

Most baseball gamers are looking for the long haul of the season.....the stats....the movement of players.....having to figure out who to plug in where when someone goes down for the season.

I agree 100000%. To give this game a 6.5 instead of a 9 solely based on online play problems would mean that nearly 1/3 of the review was based on online play, which is ridiculous. While I understand that LOTS of people enjoy playing online, online play should not, and hopefully never will be, the meat and potatoes of any sports game. Like Knight said, it's about the long road. The season. The stats. The players. The AI. The GAMEPLAY. And the review should be graded on that curve. If the reviewer was reviewing Warhawk...a strictly online game...then the score should be adjusted accordingly. But The Show does so many other things so incredibly well that to drop the score 30% just because of some online problems would be absolutely silly.

[Millennium]

Great review. Tha game is bar none the best baseball game to date, and will end up being a strong contender for Sports Game Of The Year.

Regarding online - I was having issues with online first as well. Since I have taken a few steps to maintain my network (static IP on my PS3, opened some ports in my router, SCEA's online maintenance), I have had lag free games online.

Solid 9 game, period.

[mattyg]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

I don't believe that the reviewer deducted even a fraction of a point for poor online play.......is he wrong in doing that?...probably....but I'll bet most of the guys who give their "score" here on O.S.(the O.S. members) never even thought about that either.
....so he is probably in line with the majority of guys here.

M.K.
Knight165

The scale is tough because it's .5 intervals. If I had my druthers it would've went from a 9 to like a 8.7 or something for online play, but the game is too good in regards to everything else to degrade it from a 9 to an 8.5. Maybe that's just rounding up and being generous, but the game deserves recognition as a quality title...

Well, if reviews aren't important to you, no offense, but, what's the beef? Online is messed up for you. So you want the score to be, I dunno, 6.5 and that changes things?

Not being smart in tone with this, as I understand your unhappiness with the online situation, but there's much more to this game than online. You say you don't value the review, but don't like the score. You don't value reviews, can't understand the score. Want the score lower, but reviews don't mean anything. You're angry at the online situation, understood, but you're sort of all over the place here.

LOL, glad I'm not the only person befuddled by that. Like I said if you favor online play and you read the review and saw bad online play, you have a reason to pass on the game. But if you don't read reviews when it comes to buying games I guess I don't get what the issue is. Ironically if you had waited for this review you could've seen the negatives regarding online play and you could've saved $60, even if the score was a 9 or 6.5.

I think it's misguided to think all companies look solely at Meta reviews to see how their product is doing. We don't know why online is lacking for The Show. Maybe it's something that can be fixed. Who knows? But it's silly to give the game a 6.5 instead of a 9 because of online play, only to watch Sony-SD patch the game down the road and have it play great. Now that 6.5 is an unfair score.

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Well, if reviews aren't important to you, no offense, but, what's the beef? Online is messed up for you. So you want the score to be, I dunno, 6.5 and that changes things?

Not being smart in tone with this, as I understand your unhappiness with the online situation, but there's much more to this game than online. You say you don't value the review, but don't like the score. You don't value reviews, can't understand the score. Want the score lower, but reviews don't mean anything. You're angry at the online situation, understood, but you're sort of all over the place here.

Reviews are important to the people who call the shots--->The Producers of games like The Show, Madden etc...You and I are irrelevant..When a Peter Moore can site meta-critic reviews to defend a game that has serious problems we then have to consider the impact that reviews have on the quality of games we get year after year...You have to look at what a review means in the grand scheme of things. Thats why I care about the review...I don't care about it for my own selfish reasons because I don't nee3d it to tell me whats good or not as if I was a lemming.

This is the game companies like EA, 2K and Sony play with gamers...They court many sites and play all these games to get great reviews or at the very least reviews that allow them to make alot of money from the herd that wait for a OS, IGN or other gaming site to review the game and tell everyone..."Its safe ...go buy the game"...Personally I'd rather waste $60 and make my own mind up as opposed to allowing someone else to think for me...I value the feedback and opinions but at the same time I want to form my own.

When reviewers allow their own personal bias to or determine whats important or not about a game we have a problem...Lets face it..A review as we know is a glorified opinion of one man who has a license to write for a gaming site. Not knocking reviews..But thats all they are to me...They are a form of entertainment to me..But on a larger scale they have a huge impact on how companies like EA serve gamers. I think all reviews would be more accurate w/o a score...We don't need scores do we?..In fact who do you reaqlly think benefits from the score?...Gamers??...Wake up people..Not gamers.

I don't think alot of reviewers understand the importance of their own reviews and how they may or may not shape the games that companies produce..If you can't see that then your naive to the whole process. BTW..How much do you ding a game when it has the same problem 2 consecutive years in a row...Is that more or less of a ding???

I listened to a Podcast of Peter Moore and when the interviewer addressed the inherent problems and dissatisfaction with Madden whatya think was the first thing he said..."Well, the mete-critic reviews have never been higher"...Now please lets not sugar coat this...Gaming companies are duping us left and right because we allow it and we act like we should be grateful that they made a game for our lowly selves.

IMO a 8 or 9 for this game tells Sony that its ok to have bull$hit online play because overall gamers don't care..Well thats not exactly true because even gamers who will never play online should care about the overall quality of the game. If there was a game killing franchise bug many of you would be crying bloody murder and I'd be supportive of that.

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

The scale is tough because it's .5 intervals. If I had my druthers it would've went from a 9 to like a 8.7 or something for online play, but the game is too good in regards to everything else to degrade it from a 9 to an 8.5. Maybe that's just rounding up and being generous, but the game deserves recognition as a quality title...

LOL, glad I'm not the only person befuddled by that. Like I said if you favor online play and you read the review and saw bad online play, you have a reason to pass on the game. But if you don't read reviews when it comes to buying games I guess I don't get what the issue is. Ironically if you had waited for this review you could've seen the negatives regarding online play and you could've saved $60, even if the score was a 9 or 6.5.

I think it's misguided to think all companies look solely at Meta reviews to see how their product is doing. We don't know why online is lacking for The Show. Maybe it's something that can be fixed. Who knows? But it's silly to give the game a 6.5 instead of a 9 because of online play, only to watch Sony-SD patch the game down the road and have it play great. Now that 6.5 is an unfair score.

Matty,

In your opinion who benefits most from the score any game receives from a reviewer?

Gamers or Game Producers???

[mattyg]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Matty,

In your opinion who benefits most from the score any game receives from a reviewer?

Gamers or Game Producers???

Reviews are written for the gamers, not to stroke the egos of gaming companies. If their game gets a warranted positive score and that makes them happy, good for them. If not for reviews, someone curious about the title might not know how great RTTS is or how that online play is sketchy. But this review wasn't written to appease anybody and to imply so is flat out wrong.

On the one hand you're saying reviews do nothing but benefit the companies but like I said if you had waited for our review you would've seen online was still an issue, not bought the game and not given Sony your $60. But if you want to buy games on a whim don't complain that certain modes are "broken" afterwards.

In fact online isn't totally "broken." Some guys have had little or no troubles. But lets say the game gets seriously docked for bad online play to an 8 or 8.5. What's the big difference? Is that 1 point really going to be the difference between Sony-SD fixing online or not caring? If you think really it should be a 6.5 or 7 because of online, I don't know what to tell you other than I totally disagree as do plenty of others. There are a ton of great features of this game that make it worthy of a great score.

Considering the game got called out for weak online play I really don't get why this is even an issue...

[jim416]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Reviews are important to the people who call the shots--->The Producers of games like The Show, Madden etc...You and I are irrelevant..When a Peter Moore can site meta-critic reviews to defend a game that has serious problems we then have to consider the impact that reviews have on the quality of games we get year after year...You have to look at what a review means in the grand scheme of things. Thats why I care about the review...I don't care about it for my own selfish reasons because I don't nee3d it to tell me whats good or not as if I was a lemming.

In the grand scheme of things. I only play baseball, period. I do look at gaming sites and look at the reviews of games. I see a LOT of games rated 5, 5.5, 6, even lower. I pass very quickly on these games. Write them off, actually. You feel that by giving it a crummy score will make the producers do more? Ever think crummy scores hurt sales? Less money for, let's just use SCEA, could mean that the game gets even less attention next year. Afterall, it IS all about the bottom line. Scores CAN make and break a game. Am I saying give a good score just because? Heck no. So give it a 6.5 because of the online problems (which some people say they aren't having). Then when people like me take a look at reviews and see this, I'll just pass on the game.

Reviews DO mean something. This game does NOT deserve to take a big hit soley because of the online problem. That's just my opinion.

We have been very fortunate to have very agreeable devs for this game visit the site, listen to us, add things (pats self on back for getting full roster control put it, even after having knock down drag out insults with the devs via PMs). This game is stellar, and the jump from last year, bumps and all, is astonishing.

But am I so foolish to believe that the devs are not pressured to make the game more "saleable" to the general public? Look at the baseball card thing with 2k. Guys are going gah-gah over it and the game is getting blasted by most people from the gameplay perspective. All the pressure to bear by gamers won't change somethings, as much as the devs may agree with us 1000%.

Nature of the beast. Sort of a double edged sword.

Game is a solid 9.

[SoxChamp]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

Reviews are important to the people who call the shots--->The Producers of games like The Show, Madden etc...You and I are irrelevant..When a Peter Moore can site meta-critic reviews to defend a game that has serious problems we then have to consider the impact that reviews have on the quality of games we get year after year...You have to look at what a review means in the grand scheme of things. Thats why I care about the review...I don't care about it for my own selfish reasons because I don't nee3d it to tell me whats good or not as if I was a lemming.

This is the game companies like EA, 2K and Sony play with gamers...They court many sites and play all these games to get great reviews or at the very least reviews that allow them to make alot of money from the herd that wait for a OS, IGN or other gaming site to review the game and tell everyone..."Its safe ...go buy the game"...Personally I'd rather waste $60 and make my own mind up as opposed to allowing someone else to think for me...I value the feedback and opinions but at the same time I want to form my own.

When reviewers allow their own personal bias to or determine whats important or not about a game we have a problem...Lets face it..A review as we know is a glorified opinion of one man who has a license to write for a gaming site. Not knocking reviews..But thats all they are to me...They are a form of entertainment to me..But on a larger scale they have a huge impact on how companies like EA serve gamers. I think all reviews would be more accurate w/o a score...We don't need scores do we?..In fact who do you reaqlly think benefits from the score?...Gamers??...Wake up people..Not gamers.

I don't think alot of reviewers understand the importance of their own reviews and how they may or may not shape the games that companies produce..If you can't see that then your naive to the whole process. BTW..How much do you ding a game when it has the same problem 2 consecutive years in a row...Is that more or less of a ding???

I listened to a Podcast of Peter Moore and when the interviewer addressed the inherent problems and dissatisfaction with Madden whatya think was the first thing he said..."Well, the mete-critic reviews have never been higher"...Now please lets not sugar coat this...Gaming companies are duping us left and right because we allow it and we act like we should be grateful that they made a game for our lowly selves.

IMO a 8 or 9 for this game tells Sony that its ok to have bull$hit online play because overall gamers don't care..Well thats not exactly true because even gamers who will never play online should care about the overall quality of the game. If there was a game killing franchise bug many of you would be crying bloody murder and I'd be supportive of that.

This is getting old. You are now repeating your same opinions, over and over and over again, but are accomplishing very little. It's now bordering on trolling. For someone who doesn't care about reviews, you sure are spending alot of time talking about it. And you still haven't addressed how and why you think 30% of the review should have been based on online play, a mode that is never the bread and butter of any sports game to most people.

This game is a solid 9.

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

This is getting old. You are now repeating your same opinions, over and over and over again, but are accomplishing very little. It's now bordering on trolling. For someone who doesn't care about reviews, you sure are spending alot of time talking about it. And you still haven't addressed how and why you think 30% of the review should have been based on online play, a mode that is never the bread and butter of any sports game to most people.

This game is a solid 9.

If this same exact game had GREAT online play but unplayable FRanchise/season modes what would a fair score be?????

[Oldschool17]

Re: MLB '08: The Show Review

I
We have been very fortunate to have very agreeable devs for this game visit the site, listen to us, add things (pats self on back for getting full roster control put it, even after having knock down drag out insults with the devs via PMs). This game is stellar, and the jump from last year, bumps and all, is astonishing.

Funny thing...where are those devs now to field questions about the online play?...Devs do the same thing almost every year..They show their faces daily before the game drops..Then as soon as that bad boy hits the stores...They are O-U-T