One of the more intriguing sporting titles we’ve been keeping a close eye on is the upcoming reboot of the 80s classic, R.B.I. Baseball. With the cancellation of Take-Two’s MLB 2K series, MLBAM’s (Major League Baseball Advanced Media) R.B.I. Baseball ’14 has essentially become the only slugger hitting Xbox platforms this spring.
While PlayStation users receive one of the best sports titles on the market in a few weeks for MLB 14: The Show, they’ll have a nice alternative for their arcade fix in comparison to the gorgeous simulation title they’re accustomed with. There’s sadly no online play, but the game offers 3 modes: one-off exhibition games, season, or postseason; which will basically be a pick up and play arcade batter with a really fast-paced setting. Below are the first in-game screens for the upcoming title; then you get more information for the title from Jamie Leece of MLBAM.
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“It’s going to be very true to the roots of the brand, of R.B.I. Baseball, said Jamie Leece, vice president of games for MLB Advanced Media, in a phone interview with Polygon earlier this week. It will be fast-paced; games can be played in under 20 minutes. From a user control standpoint, fans will find the controls to be ‘classic,’ reminiscent of the two-button controls from games of that generation.
Leece clarified that R.B.I. 14 will be an arcade experience; the term “arcade” carries specific connotations for sports titles, and they don’t apply here.
That’s exactly one of the challenges with the word ‘arcade’ — as soon as you say ‘arcade,’ you start thinking about power-ups and boosts and things of that genre. And we don’t have any of those [things], said Leece. Actually, R.B.I. 14’s developers are taking advantage of the massive trove of data that MLB Advanced Media collects during every real-life baseball game, and using it as the basis of player skill and behavior in the game.
When we look at all the data that we have here on player behavior, it’s a very complex set of information,” said Leece. “Basically, what you see in the output of the players will reflect that data in a very unobtrusive way.
The modes we have right now are in line with the expectation of R.B.I. It’s very important for us to make sure that the gameplay experience stays true to the core of the entire era and the genre, said Leece, when asked about the basic setup. It’s possible that future games in the series from MLB Advanced Media could offer an expanded feature set. But “for this version,” Leece continued, “we specifically wanted to focus on making sure that we nailed that right. Adding window dressing, and enhanced features and modes, may have gotten in the way of us getting the core experience right.
What we’re trying to [do] here [is] kind of capture an area that had not been capitalized on in a long time, Leece explained. This is something unique [for] an audience that had not been served for a while.”
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