“The bases are loaded, and the DH (Designed Hitter) gets up to the plate. Would this be the run to end the game?”
“AND IT’S A HOMER!”
In May this year, I fell in love with a new sport after my current favorite was stuck in a rut ( it still is, with some flashes in the pan for some feel-goodness). It was the combination of looking to try out more stuff after getting bored with the routine of games I usually play and discovering that I have a spare Xbox Game Pass Ultimate code lying around my desk. 
I actually don’t remember how I went from seeing the release of MLB The Show 24 with an astounding “ehh that’s cool, I guess” mindset to now owning actual MLB merch within the two-month timespan of me starting to play this game for the first time, whilst also racking up almost 50 hours of gameplay time alongside my usual review stuff.
And if I had to put on my newsman fedora and get into reviewing this game properly, it does feel like playing their contemporaries.
With the pretty abysmal micro-transactions that pushes the players into buying more Credits for the better players in their own version of the Ultimate Team, and its blocky menus that feels like the game is a generation behind when compared to their stateside rivals, it’s not a surprise that long-time fans and even some commenters feel like this could be a candidate for the worst game for the year.
And while I’d agree on some aspects, I would try and have a go to defend the game to the best of my abilities, which considering how I butchered Starfield last year in defending that game, I wouldn’t count on changing minds. Besides, it’s all about having fun, ain’t it?
Polishing The Static Into Something
Rather than talking about the graphics and gameplay stuff, like how the reviews usually go, let me tell you how I discovered how most people play the game on, for all places, TikTok.
Most MLB players play the player career mode, which lends itself towards two categories from my research (aka endless scrolling) of this topic, and that is being the most god-awful player to the point of being passed around like a hot potato within many teams, or being better than the baseball GOAT himself, Babe Ruth, as you go for the all-time record for each season. You can take a guess which style I choose.
The Road to The Show mode has added women players into the vicious cycle of the series, something that has happened in real life within the past decade, and then me deciding to do a Babe Ruth run as well, was such a satisfying thing to witness during my first 10 hours in the game.
Climbing up the ranks and then arriving at the Show to immediately grab a Home Run, smashing Rookie of the Year records like it’s nothing, and breaking apart the glass ceiling for your starting team is so much more fun than building up the ranks in EAFC or even the F1 Games.
It also helps that MLB is one of the fewer games that are playable on the portable side, as it launched on the Nintendo Switch in 2022 besides a lower resolution and some slowdown during cutscenes, it is a feature-complete version of the game with online cross-play with the others, and that takes insane work from all of the PlayStation support studios to make it happen for the third year running and I tip my hat to them.
Really, the game is one of those games where you don’t really need to focus that much on the gameplay as the mechanics allows you to play the game in a more relaxed manner where you can chat with someone and still land in the shots that you need, unlike most of its contemporaries.
And it’s one of the few reasons it works on the portable console like the Switch, because a 9 inning in the career mode is more like 5 minutes or less, which makes it far more enjoying at short burst than EAFC and the sorts.
Really, MLB The Show 24 came to me at the most unexpected time, gave me a warm welcome with the song and dance that made me want to discover more about Baseball, which I have, and is now in the rotation of sports that I will now constantly watch besides the big two that I already have.
Funny how that tagline for Xbox Game Pass finally makes sense to me, in the most unusual sports title in their lineup.
MLB The Show 24 is out on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. It’s also part of the Xbox Game Pass lineup.