Baseball season`s in full form and another year brings another installment of The Show. I found last year`s version of MLB 07 The Show to be a good baseball game. It had its flaws but overall I thought it was a solid effort. This time around, MLB 08 The Show has improve some aspects, kept some of the bugs, and offers another good offering if you`re a baseball fan on the PlayStation 3.

The feature I loved in the previous version was the Road to the Show. You build up a minor leaguer and work your way to a team in the majors. Let`s start off with the revamped player creator. While the previous version`s options were limited, you`re presented with a plethora of new ways to customize your player in this year`s version. You can spend hours changing a large number of aspects in terms of your players appearance. Some of the things you can customize are cheeks, forehead wrinkles, lower lip, upper lip, lower ear, middle ear, upper ear, and so on. You can even simulate taking HGH by expanding the head. There are over 30 pages of batting stances your batter can mimic. Some current and old players stances are here for you to use. Suffice to say, there are an overwhelming amount of options now available to customize your player.

On the field, improvements have been made in a lot of areas. For starters, if you are playing a position other than catcher or pitcher you can now move your player a small amount before the pitch. Say you think the batter will try to stroke one down the third base line. You can now inch your player over a few feet to cover the line more. In last year`s version you were pretty much stuck where you were when you are fielding. MLB 08 The Show addresses this issue and it really helped improve the experience of fielding. Sure, there were times I gambled a little got burned as the batter hit one past me the other way but at least I have the option this year of overplaying an area in the field.




Batting has been changed to be a little more difficult this year. In last year`s version if you guessed the location of the pitch correctly you saw exactly where the ball was going to end up. This made it really simple to lay off close pitches in the box for a ball or use the power swing when you see the location of the pitch is coming right down the middle. In MLB 08 The Show, you will only get acknowledgment that you guessed the correct area the pitch will be thrown. It could be well off the plate or it could be in on the edge of the strike zone or in the middle. You won`t get the exact location so you will still have to rely on your quick judgment to know if you should swing or not. It makes the game more challenging and I`m happy to see San Diego Studios implement this change in this year`s version. It certainly makes you pay attention to the throw even if you guessed the correct area.

Pitching is more difficult this year. The process is still the same as last year but spotting the ball is more difficult. If you don`t stop in the yellow area on the pitch meter you can pretty much count on your ball being off. I like the increase in difficulty in this area as it makes pitching a little bit more challenging. You really do have to concentrate to make good pitches this time around.

In terms of Road to the Show, there`s more ways to earn achievement points to improve your player this year and the minimum to train has decreased from 100 points to 40 making training more active. I know in last year`s version it could take a good four or five games to earn enough points to actually train. Now you can usually improve on your player in three games or less. There are several new methods to earn points and one way is to play good defense. Depending on the position, you can quickly earn points when balls are hit to you an...