MLB The Show 16

Simply put, MLB The Show 16 is the best baseball game available on any current-gen console. It looks, plays, and feels amazing, offering many ways to play the great American pastime. Franchise and Road to the Show modes have made incremental but impressive improvements, while Diamond Dynasty offers entirely new ways to play. Not every mode works, but it’s encouraging to see such a radical new mix of gameplay.

While last year’s game may have been really one of the first outings for the series that felt like little more than a roster update, the series has truly returned to form once again this year with MLB The Show 16.

Fans who exclusively play The Show year after year who have already purchased the game will be happy with the upgrades and additions this year. Familiar modes like Road to the Show and Diamond Dynasty received upgrades. A couple of new modes have been added this year (Conquest and Battle Royale). Franchise mode also received a glut of new features and improvements. The core gameplay received some significant improvements. Last but not least, there is a host of new animations and the game looks better than ever. It even has some personality.

Hitting ’em where they ain’t, one more time.

When you attend a game of baseball in MLB The Show 16, you’re not just going for the peanuts, Cracker Jack, or thrill of seeing a batter demolish a searing 97-mph fastball; you’re going to watch a player disprove Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Thanks to a new ability called “Showtime,” used exclusively in any player-lock mode like Road to the Show, the fabric of reality can unravel at any given time, gifting your player with the god-like ability to slow time to a crawl. With Showtime active, that 97-mph fastball ends up looking like a lazy balloon floating to the plate. For a series t...

If MLB The Show‘s new MO is just coasting on the good gameplay and providing minor tweaks to disparate modes, each with their own appeal (or lack thereof, depending), then there’s no greater candidate for games-as-service that I can see. Because there’s good money in it, however, I doubt we’ll drop the yearly release format. It would at least be nice to cut the PS3 version, provided that the freed-up resources would make the yearly changes a little less incremental. Still, the baseball itself is as good as ever, and one of the better modes, Road to the Show, is far less clunky this time around...