Well I went and bought back my copy of The Show and traded 2K8 in. Surprisingly 2K8 was worth more on trade than the Show was.
Costly mistake as I pretty much wasted $40 there in the deal.
Oh well, back to the game!
Well, thus far in RTTS, my left fielder remains in AA despite his .402 average, but it’s only June. My fear is that he’s going to get called up to AAA just before the All-Star break, which would suck because he’s leading the votes for left-fielders by a healthy margin of 100k.
The game has some annoying-but-minor bugs, many of which were present in last year’s version as well. But overall, I’ve been very happy so far.
By the way, I tend to play in Rookie mode. One of the interesting changes from last year is using the Guess Pitch function. In MLB 07, when you guessed a pitch correctly, the game would actually tell you where the pitch was going to end up. This year, all it does is confirm that you’ve guessed the right type of pitch, but you still can’t sit on a location. Certainly makes the game more challenging, but in a good way, IMHO. (Either that, or there’s an option somewhere that I’ve missed, but I’m fine with how things are now.)
Have I mentioned how cool it is that the game says my last name? I love that! 
Yeah. It says my last name too.
FYI it WILL show the exact location of the pitch if you correctly guess both the location AND pitch type. I’ve decided to stick with always guessing fastball since that is what they throw most of the time. I know if I it’s not a fastball there is only a 50% chance it will be a strike so I don’t normally swing.
If you get a chance to check out MLB 2K8 do it. It will make you appreciate just how great the Show looks. The graphics and presentation are fantastic.
Ah, thanks! I’ll give that a try tonight. At least if I guess both correctly, I won’t feel like I’m cheating. And I arrived at the same conclusion you did about guessing fastball. It’s particularly effective when you’re up against a picture who only throws, for example, fastball - change-up - curveball; if you guess fastball and that isn’t what’s coming, you can time your swing really, really well.
If I run across it, I will, but I’m satisfied that this thread has confirmed I made the right choice. And I can’t even truly appreciate the graphics yet because I don’t have a Hi-Def television. However, I just got back from visiting family. My brother-in-law has MLB '07 on the PS2, which is what I had last year. The difference between that and MLB '08 on the PS3 is absolutely stunning.
I have embarked on my season. 162 games of goodness. The first game was last night, a 5-2 win against the Royals.
Base running still mystifies me a little bit. I need to get that down. Hitting is…well…hit or miss with me still. I like it, but I just need to get used to it.
Pardon my ignorance – are you playing as the Tigers?
ETA: Nevermind. I see you already answered that earlier in the thread.
My other problem is the font in the game. It seems designed/optimized for a high definition TV, so some of the text is squished together. I can’t clearly see what percentage of fatigue my pitcher has and I can’t read what the numbers are for the effectiveness of his pitches.
I was looking to get a high definition TV when my finances were settled down a little bit, but it’d be VERY helpful in this game. Hell, even the letters are mushed together in Madden '08. If I can find an affordable 32 inch HDTV, I think I’d get it. I almost did a couple days ago; a Vizio 32 inch floor display model for something like 500 bucks.
Sadly, I’m probably still about a year away from my first HD purchase. I’ve gotten a chance to see how great some of the other PS3 games look in HD, and I’m chomping at the bits.
By the way, I got past the All-Star break with my left-fielder last night. Sadly, I apparently didn’t get to play in the game, although I appreciated the bonus training points I got for being selected. I’m still in AA, although my manager sends me notes every so often to tell me that I’m playing well enough to be in AAA, but the organization wants me to have more AA experience. I’m currently batting .402 with 19 stolen bases, 13 home runs and something like 65 RBIs. 8 walks, 8 strike outs in about 280 ABs.
In addition to trying to meet the training goals set out for me, I’m focusing primarily on my arm strength (I haven’t been able to throw out a single runner so far), my speed (I’ve been replaced by a pinch-runner a few times late in games) and my batting power. My manager has kept me at #3 in the batting order for pretty much the entire season so far.
Dude, 3 in the batting order is a good spot!
I’m relatively sure there’s a spot in the game to have the create-your-own superstar, but I can’t read the menus. Heh.
I had to play my first game three times. I couldn’t figure out how to save it. They talk about the autosave function, so I assumed it saved after my game. It didn’t. Why didn’t it? I’d like that. The autosave DOES kick in when you exit the Franchise calendar/menu. Meh. I’ll adjust, but it’s not intuitive when the autosave feature is brought up every time you turn on the game.
In any case, I still won. I also trotted out Joel Zumaya who SHOULD be throwing ungodly heat, but I didn’t crack 100 with him in an inning (obviously I’ll get his timing down). I bet Joba Chamberlain throws fastballs 43254326543 miles per hour. Stupid Yankees.
I play mainly in RTTS mode, but what I’d found is that I had to create the saved game (and name it) the first time around. Thereafter, my RTTS has been saved automatically to the file I created. Before I shut down for the night, I go into the save menu, and it will tell me what has and hasn’t been auto-saved to that point (I don’t know if this is based on doing it after certain events or after so many minutes), so I’ll save again if I need to.
I think I got it. We’ll see when I get home.
Perhaps you’ll be able to find the special button-mashing sequence that triggers the Flying Critters cheat when Joba’s on the mound. 
FYI Asimovian he is playing 2K8, you are playing The Show.
I played 2K8 in HD on my 360 (owned it for 2 days and returned it) and the fonts aren’t much easier to read unfortunately. The overall presentation in 2K7 was better than 2K8 IMHO.
My SS in The Show finally hit his first homerun today. It’s not too hard to steal bases in that mode on here. I’m finally finding my rythmn batting and am starting to eek out extra bases instead of singles every time, but it’s still hard.
:smack: My apologies to LOUNE. I am not being very attentive or helpful in this thread.
I agree about the base-stealing. I was a bit surprised that my fielder, who is probably about 40% maxed on speed, has been successful 19 out of 20 attempts. Certain types of pitchers are just very easy to time, although again, I’m playing on Rookie mode, which may make a difference.
I’m playing on Veteran. I’m not sure how much difference it makes in the base running though.
Have you played online at all yet? It’s laggy as hell. I’ve only played 2 games and had to quit both the lag was so bad.
Oh, that’s cool. I’m rather liking the game. I think I’m really liking the pitching and the hitting is pretty good, but I have to get the nuances. Baserunning is sometimes a journey still.
I was just reading about that on IGN’s boards earlier today. I was hoping it was just a bad experience a couple of people had, but I’m beginning to think that’s not the case.
To paraphrase the poster in that thread, it’s difficult to understand how a game like Call of Duty 4 can have eight different players at once and all kinds of things happening on-screen without any noticeable lag, but a simple thing like throwing a pitch on The Show causes lagging every three seconds or so, completely throwing off the timing of the person pitching AND the person batting.
I haven’t personally tried it yet because I don’t have any friends who have the game. I’d be glad to play against you, but it sounds like it may be futile from what you and others are saying.
We can try it out if you like. My PS3 name is beefchips . You can add me to your pal list or whatever they call it on PS3 and we can try it out. I normally play in the late evening. We are probably about the same skill level so it may be a good game.
I’ll try to add you this evening, although I may not have a chance to play tonight. My wife is not a fan of the game and when she’s free, she’d prefer to be playing Rock Band. 
By the way, did you play RTTS last year? It may be that it’s because I’m playing a different position than I did last year, but the games seem to take a lot longer now. Fortunately, the loading times are far better than they were for me when I played on the PS2 last year, but the actual play time has increased tremendously. I mean, at best guess, I’ve probably played somewhere between 8 and 10 hours so far, and I’m only in mid-July of the first season.