Victim of Culture

Review: Baseball Mogul 2010

I’ve previously reviewed Baseball Mogul 2009, and as a yearly update kind of game, it probably isn’t that important to do a full in-depth discussion of this year’s game.  If you want to know more, please see last year’s review.  And therein lies the problem—Baseball Mogul 2010 feels an awful lot like last year’s game.

Baseball Mogul 2009 felt a lot like 2008, and so on.  These games get evolutionary updates, but not the revolutionary ones some people expect.  This is a problem for developers even as Big as EA Sports—how do you improve a game year to year?  You can pile on more features or update graphics, rosters, etc.  But all of these are superficial upgrades.

For instance, this year’s version appears to have done away with some quirks in the interface that would cause hiccups in the game.  This hiccups were usually minor things, like it switching status screens on you when you didn’t expect it, but they weren’t game killers.  Having them fixed makes for a better experience, but not that much better of a game.

Of course, you also get your updated rosters, but the lack of real MLB teams will still bother some.  I found I didn’t care too much, but again, for some it will be a huge deal.  The updated rosters seemed even less a big deal considering the minor leagues already exist in the game.  I doubt there’s any player listed in this year’s game that you will notice that wasn’t included in last year’s.  The interface has been streamlined some more, but again, there’s still some quirky decision making.

For instance, why are all the majors and minor leagues listed in one screen?  Why is everything broken into twenty different screens when one would suffice?  For example, managing things like ticket pricing, concession sales, and broadcast rights could easily fit into one screen, yet they take up three here.  It just means a lot of extra clicking for no good reason.

One thing that does seem slightly improved upon from last year is the simming of season stats.  In their first few seasons of playing with you named stars with perform fairly close to your real-world expectations.  Still, stick with a team long enough and you will start to see stats go haywire.  Home run leaders only hitting 32?  That’s fine in some eras, but not the steroids era of the late 90s until today.  In general, there is a lack of power and players seem to dwindle off in performance after too few years.  It’s rather unheard of to see a guy turn in 15 years of decent performance.

All of this being said, Baseball Mogul 2010 remains a fairly cheap, accessible, fun baseball sim game.  It won’t and doesn’t deserve any graphical awards, but for sim fans that isn’t the point.  The sim aspect is fun and for numbers crunchers the stats produced can provide endless hours of pouring over them.  In other words, baseball nerds only need apply.

Verdict

+ Stats are an improvement, if still a bit wonky
+ Interface streamlining continues to improve
-  Stats are good for a short while, and then seem to go off track
-  Could use a major interface overhaul

Score

B -

Available for:  PC

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