Puddle Deep
It seems that development cycles are really starting to put sports games behind the 8 ball when it comes to innovation. Gone are the old days when games took massive leaps in looks, gameplay systems and mechanics year over year.
With MLB The Show 25, it seems that even long form content explaining their changes are gone. TheShow.com, MLB The Show's own website has the first "deep dive" which is a 3 minute Youtube video.
Ambush Hitting
Well, let's talk about the new changes. The first is "Ambush Hitting". This mechanic will allow PCI users to guess which part of the plate the pitch will cover and expand or retract the PCI of their batter if they guess correctly or not.
While this seems like a cool "new" feature, this seems like an expansion of the "Guess Pitch" mechanic. For those that have not played older titles, guess pitch would allow the batter to guess the type of pitch and the quadrant in which the pitch would cover. The player would receive two types of feedback: one for the location and another for the pitch type.
Based on the video, it is unknown if guess pitch is in the game or not. I would be surprised if it were removed, but as someone that doesn't use PCI batting (timing for the win!), this isn't something I really care about.
Infield Reaction Times
Secondly, the video mentioned changes to infielder reaction times, stating that there will be three types. These reactions will be based on your fielder's reaction ratings, meaning you can't put Vlad Guerrero Jr. at shortstop to juice your lineup and expect him to be a gold glove fielder. You can see in the video that a player with a high reaction rating will have a small stopwatch icon which I presume means it is the quickest of the new reactions.
New Difficulty
I am not embedded in the MLB The Show community. I don't watch their creators and I very rarely interact with fans over on our Twitter, but I do skim the MLB The Show subreddit. I am quite vexed as to why a new difficulty is being added. Called the "G.O.A.T." (are you for real) difficulty, this is everything you'd expect from a higher tier difficulty. The "deep dive" explains you'll be up against "faster fastballs", "more break on pitches" and "smaller PCI windows".
Why anyone wanted this when sliders exist is beyond me.
Ultimately, the gameplay "deep dive" is puddle deep. A company uses its deep dive to talk about new and changed mechanics that should excite most, if not all, of the fanbase. MLB The Show 25 gave us a three minute Youtube video barely touching on changes coming to their newest entry. While I am sure we will receive a much larger presentation on February 13th, this can not be the strategy to used to excited fans.
Compare this to what EA has done with both College Football 25 and Madden 25 when it comes to their deep dives. No matter what you think about EA and how they've handled these franchises, their deep dive segments had lengthy, longform content explaining the changes of a 4 or 5 minute Youtube video.
MLB The Show 25 doesn't have that. Instead, they'll do a Twitch presentation (which may be pre-recorded) and call it a day. My hope is that the SDS team will provide us with a lengthy, longform style breakdown of the changes coming to MLB The Show 25.
If this is how annualized sports games are going to present a "deep dive" into their changes, they may need to think about renaming their approach or actually provide us with something deeper than a 3 minute Youtube video and a Twitch stream. We deserve better.
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