MLB Power Pros 2008 is fantastic. Don't let the "kiddie" graphics fool you. Beneath the veneer of playing with animated caricatures of MLB players (which my wife calls my "little league game") lies a surprisingly deep baseball game. It's a pleasing blend of arcade and sim elements. The controls are logical although they take some practice to master. Fortunately, the game is highly customizable in terms of difficulty settings such that some experimentation should result in a balanced level of play against the CPU.
While there's an Exhibition (practice game) mode, a very comprehensive Practice feature and a simple Home Run derby, the meat of MLBPP lies in these game modes: Success, MLB Life and Season. Success is where you create a player and develop him through training and AA/AAA minor league seasons to get his shot at the Big Leagues. MLB life allows you to play through a 20 year career as a real or created player. Both these contain strong RPG elements in the quirky Japanese style.
These certainly have their appeal, but for me the Season mode is the high point of MLBPP. Here you can play through up to 10 MLB seasons as GM and Manager, playing as little or as much of the games as you choose. You can do this as either an established MLB team, a fictional expansion team or use an Arranged team of your own making with any combination of real and gamer-created ballplayers. Playing through the games yourself is very entertaining, after which you can view comprehensive stats & trend charts showing every pitch by type and location as wells as analyzing the performance of your hitters.
It's unfortunate that this long running Japanese series was only localized for the 2007 and 2008 MLB seasons. But by no means is this a deal breaker once your seasons get under way. With your created players in action and with the CPU GM's making trades and roster moves (sometimes bizarrely), your alternative baseball universe soon takes on a life of its own. And while no graphical tour de force by today's standards, MLBPP'08 still feels fresh and worthy of extensive play 6 years on, something that can be said of relatively few video games.
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PS2 MLB Power Pros 2008 (Renewed) $30.10
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