Review: MLB Manager 2018

[admin]

If you know anything about Baseball, you’re in luck. MLB Manager 18 has no tips, no tutorials, no hints at the rules of the sport or the nuances within the stats.

http://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/mlb-manager-2018/

[Eh-Red]

Such a bad review. First of all complaining about not being able to actually play as the players in a management sim is ridiculous. Then complaining about the game because they were incapable of understanding it is just as much on the reviewer as it is the game. And if they thought that this simplified version of OOTP was too difficult to understand then they better stay away from the main game lol! Maybe next time get someone who understand baseball to review the game so people that might be interested in a game like this might be better informed.

[EICJoe]

Such a bad review. First of all complaining about not being able to actually play as the players in a management sim is ridiculous. Then complaining about the game because they were incapable of understanding it is just as much on the reviewer as it is the game. And if they thought that this simplified version of OOTP was too difficult to understand then they better stay away from the main game lol! Maybe next time get someone who understand baseball to review the game so people that might be interested in a game like this might be better informed.

Dan IS interested in baseball, that's why I picked him for this assignment. I have an email where he literally says "I love baseball".

But you're right, I should have picked someone who was more into baseball.

[jeffy777]

I don’t doubt his love for baseball, but that does make it seem a bit strange that he’s apparently never played a baseball sim.
Anyone who’s ever played OOTP should know what to expect here: a text-based game. Of course there are no “mini-games” or other bells and whistles beyond the sim engine, stats, and commands/choices.

That said, maybe that’s for the best. Since he’s never played such a game, we get to see through a newcomer’s eyes just how barebones and outdated the mobile version of this game really is, even if he doesn’t have the robust PC version to compare it with.

And that’s the reason I agree with the final score: as I’ve recently stated in the comments of the other article on this game, the MLB Manager series hasn’t really changed since it was first introduced on mobile nearly a decade ago (it was first released around 2010 as “iOOTP”). Meanwhile, the PC version of OOTP has grown by leaps and bounds. While they haven’t added “mini-games”, they’ve greatly increased the stuff that baseball sim geeks are actually interested in: more stats, more GM/manager decisions, much deeper farm systems, basically just more ways to micro-manage the game and boatloads more polish. Meanwhile, the mobile version just gets a new roster update each year and that’s it, which is a travesty to be sure.

[derekw741]

It's not as esoteric as the review makes it out to be, not by a long shot, but it DOES pale in comparison to OOTP, especially today. Needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, and it could be THE killer app for baseball simming, instead of just 'the only one, really, but awful."

[G Mahler]

I guess Football Manager is not your cup of tea either because you cannot kick the ball into the net. Saying that however, when you compare OOTP mobile to FM mobile you can plainly see how underdeveloped OOTP is. The minor league system is lazily executed, the draft has hundreds of garbage players to pick from, and the overall UI is clunky and has not changed or improved over the years. Unless they do a complete overhaul of the game, I will not be wasting anymore dollars or time on it.

[20/20 hindsight]

This game is no masterpiece, but it's not as bad as this review makes it out to be.