Seeing games on TV while out at lunch on opening day yesterday inspired me to look into getting a baseball game for my PC.
What I’m really interested in is the experience of managing the baseball team. In fact, I look at my inability to control any player’s on-field activities would be a desirable feature of the game. I’d prefer a game with real, up-to-date players that mimics, as closely as possible, the experience of running a MLB franchise through a 162-game season and hopefully qualifying for the playoffs.
It seems to me the most advanced sports video games advertise as features the ability to not just manage the team but also to step into the game and take control of one of the superstar players. I don’t want that. I want to have the experience of picking a roster, deciding when it’s right to call for a squeeze play, a double-switch, or to pull a left-handed pitcher because he’s getting wild. But like a real manager, once I put in the player and call for the play, I can only sit back helplessly and hope that my strategy plays out. Front-office management (salaries and trades and such) would be kind of a fun plus, too, but it’s the in-game nuts and bolts of how managers help their teams win games that mostly interests me.
And that will let me manage a complete game in about an hour, or maybe less.
So is there such a game?
I’m pretty certain that there must be (I know, for example, of a game exactly like this for soccer and it has been received pretty well)…
Gimme a second…
Here’s what I’ve found:
Baseball Mogul seems to be close to what you’re looking for. Prior to 2006, all games were simulated and it was your job to just manage. Later games allow you to get really hands on (but I believe that meddling is optional) but it has bells and whistles that may be too tempting to avoid using so you may want to instead explore Out of the Park Baseball which is bare-bones graphically but focuses a lot more on the numbers.
I’m thinking you want OotP out of those two but both have north of 80% on Metacritic (OotP has north of *THE ORANGE BOX*).
(Oh, yeah. Avoid “MLB Front Office Manager”.)
(I ought to note: Sports games aren’t my favorites. The closest I come to enjoying them is Wrestling games (maybe boxing games). I *CAN* say that the Raw v. Smackdown 2007 game has a General Manager mode that is absolutely brilliant but had the wrong demographic for the majority of folks purchasing wrestling games. I digress. I have not played any of the games mentioned above and cannot vouch for them but am relatively certain that your itch will be scratched by one of the two recommended… given the reviews of the games made by folks who seem to suffer the same affliction you do.)
And, because I obsess about this stuff, I did even more research and found that there are demos.
Here is the demo for Baseball Mogul 2011, it’s good for one season of play (but you can import saved games into the real game if/when you purchase it).
And here is the demo for Out of the Park Baseball. It’s good for 10 Real Life days and 1 1/2 fictional play seasons or 1/2 of a historical play season.
Whew. Now I can stop thinking about this.
Back in the bad old days when Al Campanis helpfully explained that black people “may not have some of the necessities” to be a manager, some genius (I wish I recalled who) reflected that the only real requirements to be a big-league manager were being able to
1. Spit out a mouthful of tobacco-laden saliva without getting it on your shoes, and
2. Say “horseshit” in front of anyone up to and including the Queen of England.
I used to love Baseball All-Stars for the NES, where you could sign players — “veterans” with built up skills, but little room for improvement, or high-potential “rookies” in whom you could invest all your peanut money.
If you want to go back to older platforms, Sierra’s old BBPro 98 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/sports/frontpagesportsbp98/index.html) may work.
Out of the Park Baseball 12 is out.