RayCarsilloWrites.com

Like many others who grew up with R.B.I. Baseball, I was thrilled when I found out it would be making a return on modern platforms after two decades of dormancy. As a pioneer of baseball on consoles, R.B.I. Baseball obtained the license from the MLB Players Association to be the first game to feature actual player names back in the 1980s. Now, 20 years after the last game to bear the name—with this new title developed by Major League Baseball itself—R.B.I Baseball looks to reignite a passion in arcade-style sports games that has been snuffed out by the barrage of simulation games over the past couple of decades.

Unfortunately, it seems that the inexperience Major League Baseball has in actually making videogames is an issue. R.B.I. Baseball 14 is one of the biggest wastes of time and money I’ve ever had the displeasure of putting on one of my home consoles.

R.B.I. Baseball 14 has only three modes: Exhibition to play a single game, Season to play a full 162-game schedule (with options for shorter seasons), and Playoffs to jump right to October with your favorite team. As a baseball junkie, I jumped into a full Season mode and felt I’d get enough of a sense of the game. After eight games as my beloved New York Yankees, I never want to pick my controller up for the sake of this game ever again.

Let’s start by looking at the presentation. Once you’re past the colorful opening screen and get into an actual game, you’ll quickly grow weary of looking at the same three player models over and over again. Each stadium at least has a bit more character to it, with familiar landmarks etched out behind outfield walls, but you only get brief glimpses of them on long flyballs or home runs. You’re then met with the same repetitive scoreboard between innings, no matter the stadium, and the most annoyingly wretched jingle outside of your local doctor office’s elevators.

Also, while I’m fully aware that this is an arcade-style game and that stats aren’t stressed here, I can’t stand the fact that when a player comes to bat, his 2013 stats are shown every time. If you’re going to make that big of a deal about old numbers, you should update them for how well I do in the game—or nix them altogether.

I could deal with some lackluster visuals, however, if the gameplay provided a worthwhile experience. It doesn’t. The worst aspect? The defense. Every flyball is an adventure, because the game offers no indication whatsoever of where the ball will land. Cans of corn turn into inside-the-park home runs, infield flies into doubles, and every foul ball into another opportunity for the batter to punish you for not being able to judge virtual depth from a bird’s-eye view of the field.

Pitching is the next shortcoming. While R.B.I. Baseball 14’s pitching mechanics are a throwback to those versions we played on the NES, with every pitcher having a screwball, a fastball, and a really hard fastball that you can move around while the ball is in motion, the idea of managing pitching is completely lost. Every starting pitcher can only go four to six innings before becoming too tired to continue effectively in most instances. But there’s only one actual relief pitcher in your bullpen, so you’re often just rotating starters for other starters because the invisible stamina meters for the pitchers are out of whack.

At least hitting and baserunning are fairly straightforward, relying mostly on timing and not having to worry about a power swing versus a normal swing or matching up overlays with both analog sticks or anything too insane. It’s such a simple mechanic that even R.B.I. Baseball 14 couldn’t find a way to mess it up.

This doesn’t mean things get better outside of the batters box and the bases, though. The computer AI is atrocious, and remember those tired pitchers I mentioned before? Sometimes the computer forgets to adjust to the slower velocity you have. I struck out the side in three of the last four innings I pitched with Masahiro Tanaka after he was “exhausted” throwing 62 mph “fastballs.” The computer kept swinging early as if I were still throwing 93 mph.

The AI also has as much difficulty fielding as you do, often just standing still as slow groundballs find their way to the outfield while the first baseman and second baseman stare blankly at each other. Sometimes the computer will make up for this, though, and magically teleport the ball into a fielder’s glove. They don’t even have to be on the same side of the field!

Really, the only good part of R.B.I. Baseball 14 is the mercy rule: If you’re ahead by more than 10 runs past the 5th inning, the game is over. I was able to institute that in a couple of my games, and I was grateful: The game mercifully, for me, came to an early end.

In all seriousness, Major League Baseball should be as embarrassed about R.B.I. Baseball 14 as they were about the 1994 strike and the steroid scandals. This game is an abomination, and it’s not a worthy representation of the sport. Don’t even look this game’s way—or you risk losing your baseball-loving soul.