The Common Man did not plan to buy MLB12: The Show this year. He bought and enjoyed last year’s version (when the Twins were much, much better), and didn’t see the need to shell out $60 to stop living with the lie that Vernon Wells is a good player and that Justin Morneau’s career wasn’t in jeopardy. Plus, there were some truly annoying features of the game that TCM had trouble ignoring. Namely, the baserunning in Road to the Show is incredibly boring, the Franchise mode is bogged down by tedious and mundane details, and the minor league system of having to continually re-sign players makes very little sense.
Then he started hearing good things. Namely, that Steve Berthiaume loved it. Bert is a good dude who, despite his well-documented weakness in picking NL Central champions, plays video games openly and unrepentantly. That endears him to me. He’s been addicted to The Show for years, and so was sent an early copy. He was ecstatic that,
“The game's programmers have completely replaced last year's code and thus changed the way the baseball behaves with what they call True Ball Physics, which uses actual math for a spinning baseball that ricochets off bases, the pitching rubber and other field surfaces. The spin of the baseball off the bat is now accurate with realistic RPMs and the ball gains or loses energy like a real baseball, resulting in more hit type varieties. Line drives rise or sink and infield chops quickly become difficult to handle.”That sounded very promising. So, on Tuesday night, TCM stopped at Target on the way home and bought it, and over the last two nights, after washing the dishes and putting the kids to bed, TCM has played around with it in both Road to the Show and Franchise modes as an “experienced” player and using a standard controller (you can also use PS3 Move, if you have it). Here are the game’s features, and TCM’s reaction to them: