Batter up!
This is a hard one to place. Surprisingly for EA – especially considering the state of PGA tour - it ticks most of the boxes. The game looks good, with a very stylized theme. It has a tutorial that does a good job of telling you how to play. The mechanics make sense. The audio is fine. There’s not really a lot here to complain about, and that’s the surprising part.
The first thing that comes to mind after booting up 'Super Mega Baseball 4' is 'Wii Sports Baseball'. Similarly easy to pick up and play, similar looking although updated for current hardware, this game is a gentle way into baseball for people who aren’t yet fans of the sport. The menu is easy to navigate and the art style is welcoming, and even if you never cared about baseball before, the game does enough right at the start to make you at least give it a chance.
Interestingly for a sport notorious for incredibly in-depth and arduous rules, 'Super Mega Baseball '4 somehow manages to simplify while also maintaining the nuances that make the sport so beloved by millions around the world. The tutorial/tool tips system is invasive enough that you can’t ignore it, while also being easy to skip. Herein lies the beauty of it – if you know how baseball works but not how to play this specific game, just click through the stuff you know already. If you don’t have a clue about baseball but for some reason you find yourself sitting third person behind the pitcher, don’t worry. The game tells you everything you need to know. How to throw, what different throws do, how to catch, how to pass to your teammates, all the ‘in’s, ‘out’s, ‘up’s, ‘down’s. The mechanics of this specific video game, and the rules of the game of baseball, all neatly wrapped up in a way many other sports games should be jealous of.
There is a certain level of skill required to win your matches though. Just because you’ve been welcomed into the world of baseball doesn’t mean you get to sit in the CEO chair straight away. There are leagues to go through, matches to win, batters to strike out and pitches to nail over the fence first.
The port to PC wasn’t perfect with the translation of controls in the tooltips, but with some critical thinking most people should be able to figure it out. Once you have an OK grasp of the controls regardless of preferred platform you should find the game in that rare sweet spot between too easy and too hard. It’s in the Goldilocks zone, just about right.
If you’re a baseball fan, this should be an easy purchase. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, this game is an unlocked door to a world you may have never thought to walk through. So easy to pick up and put down, so nice to look at, everything basically works, this could be the new way to wind down from a stressful match of 'Warzone', etc.
This game has potentially unlimited replayability, but there’s only so much you can do with baseball. A great little pallet cleanser, and while it does so much right, it’s still a sports game at the end of the day. This is its strength and downfall. It has more or less perfectly done what it set out to do, a fun, easy to play and hard-to-master baseball game that simply works. But that’s it. It does what it says on the tin, and if you want more than that you’re not going to find it here.