GZ: "I guess you could call the MLB Power Pros series something of a cult hit here in the states. The series originated in Japan in 1994, but only made the trip across the Pacific last year in the form of Wii and PS2 versions. This year, the DS joins the party with an incarnation of its own. And although the tried-and-true gameplay makes the transition nearly flawlessly, the game lacks many of the features that made such a splash in the console versions."
Don’t like sports? There’s a whole segment of games you can immediately write off, as far as you’re concerned. Or can you? You don’t have to be a comics fan to like Batman: Arkham City, and the appeal of Mario isn’t just limited to plumbing aficionados. Brad Woodling and Graham Russell are here to help with a list of games you should check out even if they have sports in them, because you’re missing out on a lot of fun.
WorthPlaying writes: "If you're yearning for the days of earlier sports titles like Tecmo Bowl and haven't been able to get into current- or last-gen sports titles due to their complexity, you might find something to love in MLB Power Pros on the PS2. It's not as deceptively simple as the cover art seems to suggest, and there are still some hardcore elements to the season setup (i.e., the trades system, overall managerial duties), but the core gameplay is about as simple as you can get. The pitching, batting and fielding mechanics are easy to figure out, which make this a pretty solid introduction to the sport for new players, and players jaded by the sheer amount of options that most sports titles bombard you with nowadays."
GamingTrend writes: "Baseball is a weird sport. There really shouldn't be anything too exciting about it, in all honesty. There's only so many things that can happen on the field, and a very strict template as to how the game should be played. There isn't half the strategy of football, the pure athleticism of soccer and basketball, or the brutality of hockey, but there's still something charming about baseball that's missing in many other sports.
For those reasons, there's something about baseball that always eludes game developers as well. What do people like about baseball? The home run? The ballpark ambiance? 100 mile-per-hour fastballs? There are very few games that get baseball right, and I'm happy to say that MLB Power Pros 2008 is one of them. Where does it excel? Where does it fall short? And why does a game with such cartoonish graphics feel more like baseball than a lot of more "realistic" baseball games?"
