MLB 08: The Show (#4)
As my Road To The Show pitcher is still scuffling in AA ball, I had an understanding of something I've never quite gotten before.Road To The Show mode has a strong RPG angle to it. There are well over a dozen categories of ratings related to pitching and fielding, and there never seem to be enough training points to increase them at the rate I want. Either I'm not getting enough work, or I'm just blowing opportunities. Plus, all of these skills degrade over time, which makes them even more difficult to manage.
I normally earn 60-80 training points in a good outing. That sounds like a lot, but it's really quite small in terms of the ratings improvement it will give you. After a recent outing, I was sitting there wondering what it would be like to have 500--or even 1000--training points that I could use as I wanted. It would take me from AA to AAA almost overnight, maybe even right to the threshold of the major leagues.
That's when I understood steroids for the first time. When I saw them as training points, it helped me understand why people would take them. That doesn't make it right, and steroids and the drug culture have permanently turned me away from real baseball, but it helped me see the temptation.
Not something I expected a baseball videogame to help me understand.
By the way, after playing compulsively for a week and a half, there is no question in my mind that this game has the best animation ever seen in a sports game. Any sports game, no matter the sport. The number of animations and the seamless transition between them has never been approached, at least not to this degree.
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