Last week, I discussed how MLB The Show 23 has focused on its online game modes and needed more development when it came to its single-player “Road To The Show” and “Franchise” mode.
For those looking for the best presentation and gameplay, MLB The Show is still the place to go. But if your goal is to be the best general manager, manager, or GM/manager in baseball, this is the game for you! Out of the Park Baseball 24 is a solution that offers a complex and complete management simulation with a dated presentation style and gameplay that is less play and more managing the perfect Excel document.
Own the park
While Out of the Park Baseball 24 still doesn’t include a truly playable player experience, it boasts the best experience for those who want to own or manage a team.
You can pick the amount of control you want in terms of baseball strategy and operations, as well as your team in the North American and Korean professional leagues. There are also several team-centric yearly challenges you can pick to turn on or not. If you choose to include them, you’ll receive challenges like “have a winning season” or “scout a new pitcher.”
Because you can’t take over the game and play for yourself, aside from offering in-game coaching calls, you need to balance your spreadsheets as best as possible. However, Out of the Park Baseball 24 does offer the ability to allow AI coaches to manage things if you feel like there’s something you need help understanding.
Perfect play
Those looking to prove they are the better fantasy manager can start their custom team in “Perfect Team.”
After setting up an account and drawing some player card packs, you can set up a fantasy team with players, new and old, that will go up in simulation against another player’s fantasy team in a league of players. These games happen every half-hour Monday through Saturday, and games take place between 10 AM ET and 1 AM ET.
Each game will net you some Perfect Points [PP], which you can use to buy more card packs for 1,000 PP.
If you want to speed things up, you can buy packs with real money. But Out of the Park Baseball 24 does offer a smooth pack opening experience for this cost with a catchy musical jingle and a visual party of confetti and highlighting for rarer pulls. This is all set over a picture of a hip-looking club room.
In Out of the Park Baseball Performance Matters
OOTP has never been known for its presentation. The game adopts PS1-era 3D models that have more movement than in past years, with new arm movements, diving and running animations and some slick new pitching animations. But all of this chugs along.
There’s a scrolling text-based commentator that allows you to pick the speed at which it moves, but with no vocalization and very few actual lines, there’s not much to keep you invested in focusing on it. Though there’s the occasional quip about a streaker on the field or finding parking before the game that catches you off guard.
There are several 3d and 2D presentation styles to pick from, with 3D favouring showing you the action of a game while 2D and Webcam visuals favouring all of the information you need on the field to keep your team producing and winning.
I am playing on a 49-inch UHD monitor, and I am amazed that this game supports 5120 x 1440 resolution without looking too muddy or having too many performance issues. There is a fair amount of visual stutter, but not so much that it’s immersion-breaking.
One thing that is very immersion-breaking that I can’t seem to comprehend is Out of the Park Baseball 24‘s loading times. I get that spreadsheet games like this one to have an enormous amount of data to read through and turn into progression. But the presentation and progression are so dated and simplistic that data processing seemingly should happen a lot faster.
A costly game
In Canada, there are some value proposition problems here. The cost of entry is high at $45 for a spreadsheet with a game presentation that’s at least 20 years out of date.
Throw in wanting to make progress in the “Perfect Team” mode discussed above, and you are looking at a spreadsheet that is the cost of a AAA studio game. That’s fine for some who deeply care about having control over the baseball team of their dreams. But I am willing to bet some people may just spend the extra money for MLB The Show 23, which offers a similar experience with a better on-field game.
Verdict
Out of the Park Baseball 24 is somewhat of a tough game, to sum up in a simple verdict. Essentially, it’s a very detailed spreadsheet simulation that is full of personal options. If you are willing to learn about the ins and outs of baseball management or are at least not too high and mighty as to scoff at learning from AI, then there’s an incredible single-player franchise experience here. But with a presentation that will take you right back to the early 2000s and an alarmingly high cost of entry, this is a tough recommendation.
[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
