Sports games have always been a difficult genre for me to get into. With new games literally being released every year for various sports (such as football, baseball, basketball, etc.) and each game feeling exactly the same as other installments for years before, it’s become increasingly hard for me to work up interest in any of them. Yes, it’s a break from another shooter in a vastly overpopulated market. But at the end of the day, it’s not enough. Having said that, some sports games are significantly worse than others. Thankfully for “MLB The Show 20”, it’s not in the aforementioned camp. As someone who hasn’t played a baseball game in eons, I appreciate the game’s welcoming tutorial that allows you to choose your own play style. You can choose to have swings, pitches, etc. performed through either the analog controls or the primary buttons depending on what’s easiest for you. I personally found the buttons to be far more reliable. The analog controls get a little too exhausting and tedious for me.
It can be challenging to be the pitcher and try to strike out your opponents. But it’s challenging in the right ways and not because of a cumbersome control scheme. Harnessing the accuracy of where your pitch will land within the pitching zone is meant to simulate the difficulty of the pinpoint focus a baseball pitcher is used to experiencing on the ball field. It’s not quite as easy when you’re up to bat either. You have to guess what kind of pitch is going to be thrown your way, and depending on which type of pitch you choose, your outcomes will naturally vary. As a baseball game, “MLB The Show 20” works for what it was intended to be. From there, the real question begs if this is the kind of game for you. As for how I personally feel, I’ll be honest with you all. I only need one sports game in my personal gaming collection, and it’s called “Rocket League”. That being said, I’m open to playing a sports game, whether through extreme sports (“SSX”, “Tony Hawk”, etc.) or more arcade likes efforts (“NFL Street”).
Or I can just stick with fanciful efforts such as the aforementioned “Rocket League” that play with existing real sports and putting a fanciful spin to it that only this medium can put out. As far as simulation sports games go, the yearly iterations of the same sports game franchises (namely “Madden NFL” and “NBA 2K”) have already proven that you can only so far within this genre before getting very tired extremely fast. I could be playing a certain game of soccer for an hour or so, and then I’d be like “okay, what’s next?” Compared to the rest of the games within the sports genre, “MLB The Show 20” is fairly polished in the gameplay department. It will probably serve as one of the more tolerable sports games non-sports fans can play without much complication or grief from the Internet. But then again, your enjoyment of this title will depend on whether or not you’re still into baseball or if one too many relentless and never-ending Yankees vs. Red Sox game drove you away. Take that with a pinch of salt.