The Video Game Thread

[Jocephus]

MLB The Show 21 Is Being Released to Its Widest Audience Ever
by Luke Hooper
April 20, 2021

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/mlb-the-sho ... ence-ever/

[Michael]

I run a discord for Game Pass players. I've been playing The Show with some folks. We play other games like Halo and SoT. Let me know if anyone wants a link.

[Jocephus]

played my 1st and only game on the show last night. its crazy, haven't played a AAA studio baseball game in so long, the things you can do is absurd. the rosters are live and you can literally look the days actual MLB schedule and play the games as they are in real life. so that's what i did, stl vs nats though i chose flaherty.

first thing, i was playing on beginner to get used to things. pitching is easy peasy, the hitting...its hard not to just swing at everything hah...but i'll get there. they gave flaherty barely enough stamina to go 5. edman, goldy and nolan have great batter box red zones, yadi and dejong are kinda in between, then rest of roster is blank or blue squares in the zone...not good. i got 4 hits with edman and dejong hit a crucial homer to give us the lead, ultimately won 3-2. i struck out 24 nats hah.

i dont know if its just the typical new game, release day bugs which gamers just allow companies to do (which they shouldn't) or the game is not optimized great for the xbox one but it wasnt completely smooth in some areas/transitions. i could probably tinker with the settings to make it a little better. that said, it is still cool to be playing the game...and it was so strange seeing the PS logo pop up in the beginning.

[ghostrunner]

What do you all have set for pitching and hitting? We chose Classic pitching just so we could get right into it without much trouble and the hitting we set on whatever the first option is where you point it and swing. I find the power/contact/regular button setup kind of dumb but I'm coming from the old 2k series.

Don't really like that you have what seems like a half second to locate your pitch and it's not clear in the training how you set the location. Finally figured out you have to tap the pitch button a second time to do that otherwise it seems to go back to a default location.

Nice to be playing a real baseball game again though and I'll get used to it.

[Jocephus]

forgot the names honestly...i picked the one where you choose a button for pitch, get to pre-aim it, then hit pitch button again to deliver. for hitting i chose the option where you have the circle and can move it around fully....not the directional one or the other option. still undecided on how i like it. i dont mind the power/contact/regular though i do wonder whats the point of "regular"...and what that even means. maybe the game told me, after a while i got annoyed withe prompts and was just tapping A to get out of them when they'd pop up. the homer i hit with dejong must have been complete luck 'cause i got a prompt saying i'd hit like, perfection...perfect area of hit box, perfect swing type, etc. it was a line drive though, into LF bullpen.

[Jocephus]

xbox with more good will - no longer need a xbox gold account to play free to play games. article has a list of the free games...at least, mostly, i assume.

https://kotaku.com/xbox-free-to-play-ga ... 1846730687

[Famous Mortimer]

The Game Pass is a pretty good deal (I'd join your Discord, but I only really game on my PC these days).

[Michael]

The Game Pass is a pretty good deal (I'd join your Discord, but I only really game on my PC these days).

Game pass is on PC and Cloud as well. I've played Halo with several PC players. I'll send you a link!

[Michael]

BTW, last night on my discord I was walking a guy from Chile thru how baseball works while we played a game together. Sometimes I forgot how complicated baseball is. SO MANY RULES

[ghostrunner]

Man, I was playing last night and I'm a little overwhelmed with the amount of options and modes in this game. Then there's Stubs which let you buy cards and other stuff, but I don't know what it's for. I assume it's for online play but I don't really know.

I wish there was a bit more help/explanation available within the game. The practice option and hitting/pitching/fielding explanations are really helpful though.