I’m very much enjoying the challenge of playing the “Road to the Show” mode in MLB10. This is my first experience with the Sony-developed baseball game, and it’s a really polished sim.

It’s basically baseball crossed with an RPG, like the similar modes in EA’s games (which I also enjoyed in NHL10). You create a position player, and play as that player through an entire career. I chose to play as a starting pitcher—but of course, I began in middle/late relief and had to work my way into the pitching rotation in AA ball to start.

As I posted before, you can take captures of plays in the game. Here’s a highlight reel of my strikeouts from a few games ago:

And one of a single play where I took one for the team:

(There are a few things in there that break the illusion, like the background music going across clips in the highlight reel, but it’s a neat feature anyway. It helps people who don’t have capture rigs.)

I’m a couple of months into the season and pitching late in the rotation (still in AA). It’s fun to learn how to pitch around people and how to work with relatively low velocity and bad control (I’m a rookie, after all). I’ve got four pitches: a 4-seam, a 2-seam, a change, and a slider. My strikeouts are all based on speed changes and pitch location. No CGs yet, but three quality starts to my name. I can make it about 7 innings, and then the coach takes me out if I get a single dude on base.

Yes, it’s really fun. The presentation is amazing, but I’ve seen a few bugs in the lower-thirds displayed and even in the commentary. I’m willing to deal with that for the sake of playing a pretty realistic baseball sim.