It seems to be the year for incremental improvements in baseball management simulations. Just like its main rival, Out of the Park Baseball 9, Baseball Mogul 2009 enters a new season looking a lot like it did last season. After adding a tremendous number of new features and enhancements during the past two years, the current edition of the text-based sports sim is more of a taking-stock upgrade. It focuses on minor revisions to the presentation and artificial intelligence. The result is a good game with subtle improvements that make a better big-league management experience, but one that isn't essential if you already own its predecessor.
The Good:
* New Major League rosters for 2008
* Franchise scenario options with new Expansion mode
* Subtle improvements to visuals and artificial intelligence.
The Bad:
* Very similar to last year's game
* A few quirks with stat results
* Some bugs with data display.
Even though it's not without its flaws, Baseball Mogul 2009 serves as a pretty decent introductory management sim. Fans of the game looking to try a game in this genre out would be pleasantly surprised at the ease and accessibility Baseball Mogul provides. Those of you turned off by MLB Front Office Manager should try this game out to see what a proper management sim is like. GamerVision still finds a game like Out of the Park provides a bit more depth than this game, but for the price ($20), you sure do get every penny out of Baseball Mogul.
For $25, the value proposition of this time-sink is impressive if you consider yourself more managerial material than on-field talent. Just remember to keep your eyes out for a patch, and check the official site to keep up to date with the latest tweaks.
You'll love:
- Deep and complex
- Mostly accurate, current data
- Good value for your dollar
You'll hate:
- Somewhat buggy
- Micromanagement too time consuming
- Sometimes illogical behaviors
There are also just weird things that the AI chooses to do, from not resigning star players (instead letting them go to free agency), to its aforementioned desire to have the user give up outs for no reason. And yet, except for the most serious of stat-heads, most of these AI quirks are minor and easily overlooked.
Also easily overlooked, but not easily listened to, are the game's new sound effects, particularly the crowd noises, which sound a little like glorified static. While the cracks of the bat and audience noise are cute at first, they become old very quickly. Everything sounds almost identical and, as a stat-based game, there is little purpose in it unless the question is how many people in the crowd applauded the home run.
The biggest problem with the game is that if one has last year's version there is very little reason to upgrade to this year's version. The look is somewhat nicer, but that's about it.
One of my complaints last year was that the photos of players delivered with the game were ancient (Jason Giambi not wearing a Yankee uniform was my example). For a new version of the game, it is distressing that the same thing remains true. One can go to the forums and download pictures, but it's a cumbersome manual process and the pictures seem to be only semi-official. There simply is no reason why, if this year's version is only slightly updated from last year's, that such a fundamental element shouldn't have been changed.
For all its foibles, Baseball Mogul 2009 is still an enjoyable experience. It shows just why baseball is such a game for stat-lovers and makes those stats accessible to everyone. There are numerous different ways to play the game, with the computer having the ability to handle any aspect that the user feels either too mundane or too complex. Allowing the computer to take over some of the operations will never allow a team to reach the dizzying heights (or abysmal lows) that it could with the user in control, but it does make the game more accessible.
