MLB 14: The Show is another great baseball outing almost by default, as it returns all of the rewarding modes along with the strong fundamental hitting, pitching, and fielding mechanics that made this series famous. But as a returning fan, I had a hard time getting excited about this year’s new features outside of the obligatory roster updates. It’s got couple of winning ideas, like player-made scenarios and cross-play support with the Vita, but with the laggy online play and load times as long as a Red Sox-Yankees game, it feels like Sony reached the limits of what the PS3 can handle a year or two ago.

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Just as in last year’s MLB 13: The Show, the players look and animate beautifully – including myriad little details like end-over-end bat flips after a swing-and-miss or a second baseman’s backhanded flip to the shortstop to initiate a double play. All of it controls well, though, and you’ve once again got plenty of input options for each aspect of game. In particular, I find that the Pulse Pitching introduced last year strikes the best balance of realism and fun. But again, this is all stuff I saw and liked last year, so it doesn’t really feel new and shiny.On the field, Road to the Show has long been The Show’s signature mode. In assigning your created player a single position and playing five-minute games involving only his at-bats and defensive plays, it’s once again a bite-sized, consistently rewarding mode. Its compelling RPG-like experience system rewards your good play with the chance to spend Training Points on your avatar – in my case, hot 2B prospect Ryan McCaffrey – to improve his skills and inch him closer to his major-league debut and, eventually, career. A new pre-draft showcase, seemingly lifted straight from NBA 2K12 and later, gives you the option to get drafted after playing in an amateur showcase. I was taken with the 30th and final pick in the second round by the Cardinals, but the game made me wait for every single one of the 29 other names to be called in the round before it would let me proceed. I saw no way to button through this. Fortunately, you can also bypass this entirely and simply brute-force your player onto any team you wish.Road to the Show is MLB’s biggest and sharpest hook, but MLB 14 casts a few extra lines in the water this year as well. Community Challenges let you craft and upload scenarios both realistic and improbable for others to play, like the two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth-in-Game-7-of-the-World-Series situation I made. It adds a clever crowdsourced twist on a mode we’ve seen in other sports games, such as NBA Live 14.Meanwhile, Franchise mode has finally gone online, though my experiences have not been good. I suffered frustrating levels of lag and choppiness in head-to-head matchups, while load times in general – but particularly when jumping into online modes – were long with the recommended 10GB hard-drive install and downright eternal on the standard, mandatory 5GB installation.Adding Cross-Play (but sadly not Cross-Buy) support for the Vita version of MLB 14 is an incredibly welcome feature, particularly when modes such as Franchise can be enjoyed for dozens if not hundreds of hours. And my other new favorite new timesaver is Quick Counts, which drastically reduces the amount of time it takes to get through a nine-inning game by starting every batter on both teams with a deep count (i.e. 1-2, 2-1, 3-0, or 0-2), much like the IGN softball team’s beer-league rules. I only wish it could be toggled on or off during a game. Sadly, it must be activated before you take the field.

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Here’s the good news regarding the PS4 version of MLB 14: The Show: it maintains complete feature parity with the PS3 edition. Absolutely nothing is lost. But that’s the semi-bad news: nothing – outside of a few new animations sprinkled in – is gained, either. The key difference is in the raw visuals, which should make you happy. Where the PS3 game recommends you play at 720p, The Show soars in 1080p on PS4. This is a gorgeous port, no doubt. Players look fantastic – easily on-par with the hoopsters of NBA 2K14 on PS4 – and the ballparks have been given a much-needed refresh.But it’s not all peanuts and Cracker Jacks; the loading times are abysmal on the new console, and a stuttering framerate during many non-gameplay shots drag down the otherwise stunning broadcast-like presentation. Meanwhile, the game’s other minor annoyances – all detailed in the rest of this review – remain. If you’ve got a PS4, there’s no debating it: the next-gen version is the no-brainer version to buy – but only if you’ve been holding out and don’t already have it on PS3.