MLB The Show does co-op better than its sports game competitors

Modern AAA sports games have been overrun by card-collecting modes. The explosive popularity (and profitability) of EA Sports FC’s Ultimate Team has compelled most of the other major sports game franchises to imitate it — each EA title has its own Ultimate Team mode, the NBA 2K franchise has MyTeam, and MLB The Show has Diamond Dynasty.

Beyond the predatory microtransactions that are ever present in some of these games, these card-collecting modes can make it feel like the genre is running away from its roots: having fun playing virtual sports with your friends. Most of these modes try to awkwardly shoehorn in a way to play cooperatively in an attempt to overcome this, but only MLB The Show is able to deliver on an actually fun co-op experience. 

Diamond Dynasty’s ranked co-op is simple. Before games, each player chooses three hitters, one starting pitcher, and two relievers from their individual Diamond Dynasty roster to add to a collective roster that both players build together. The game then fills in any remaining gaps from a consistent pool of players to build out a full roster of 26. The gameplay side of things works on the basis of switching off who’s doing what. During odd innings, Player 1 pitches and catches while Player 2 fields, and during even innings, it’s reversed. On offense, players switch off who’s hitting with every at-bat, meaning that both players get the chance to hit with everyone on the roster more than once across nine innings.

It’s a tremendously straightforward system, but also one that allows for a far more balanced share of gameplay than the co-op offered in any other sports game’s card collection mode. There’s no struggle over playing one person’s lineup or another (in Madden and EA Sports College Football, one person brings the offense and another brings the defense). There’s no feeding the ball to one player repeatedly because they’ve got an unstoppable 98-overall big man. And there’s no missing out because one player gets to be quarterback and the other doesn’t. It genuinely feels like it gives both players the same space for fun.

While much of this comes down to some fantastic decision-making by MLB The Show developer SIE San Diego Studio, the reality is that even more of it has to do with the sport itself: Baseball is just way easier to make into a co-op exercise. It consists of a series of one-on-one battles, which means you almost never have to rely on AI decisions in your games (unlike the 5-on-5 or 11-on-11 sports, where most of the players at any given time will be AI controlled, even with two humans in the mix). EA Sports FC is limited by the speed and pace of soccer, so a series of quick passes that means you often hand off on-ball responsibilities within a second of gaining them. 2K’s Triple Threat co-op keeps you locked on a single player, which is just fine for 3v3 but isn’t the best setup for just two players, who then have to simply hope that their AI teammate happens to complement their play style. Meanwhile, Madden is a bit of a co-op mess thanks to the intricacies of football in general; it is by far the most complex sport of the bunch. 

Baseball doesn’t really have any of those problems. It’s full of natural breakpoints to swap positions. Letting players switch off with each at-bat doesn’t just allow everyone the chance to try every card in the lineup — it also means that any meaningful single-inning rally has to include both players seeing the ball well and getting hits. It necessitates group success in a way few other sports games do, all without limiting the literal home run potential of one player popping off to get things done themselves.

This next part may sound odd as a way to praise a co-op game, but the effect of this setup is wonderfully lonely in a way that only baseball can be. Every at-bat is a new chance to get your team ahead, to put both of you in a better position to win the game — and yet, the actual act of hitting is simply you against the pitcher. There’s no minigame where your teammate can help you guess pitches or steal signs. There’s no real bonus you get when your partner hits a home run just before you (though the pitcher’s confidence ratings might be a little shaken). Success is all up to you.

But as in real baseball, this loneliness makes room for new methods of communication that other games don’t have. Your teammate may not be able to mechanically help you during an at-bat, but they can feed you information on what the pitcher’s tendencies might be, just like teammates in a real-life baseball game might. In other words, my embarrassing strikeout may not have been worth much during my at-bat, but it let me inform my teammate that the pitcher loves using a high fastball to finish off hitters, so they were looking for it when they went down two strikes themselves.

Just like in real baseball, hitting is extremely hard in MLB The Show. In what feels like a fraction of a second, you have to correctly identify the incoming pitch, decide whether to swing at it, and then align your hitting indicator and time your hack properly. Having someone along with you on that journey goes a long way, because the easiest way to succeed (if you don’t have extremely good vision and reflexes) is pattern recognition, and two pairs of eyes is better than one for that. When we — the two authors of this post, co-writing this in true co-op style — started playing co-op in MLB The Show 25, it took us quite a few games to eke out our first win. But with practice, hard work, and paying close attention to our opponents, we’ve been able to hit much more consistently and put together strings of wins.

On the pitching side, there’s a similar kind of solitude that provides ample room for both heroics and disaster. There’s no feeling in any co-op game quite like finding yourself struggling with runners on first and third base and no outs, and remembering that there’s no way to tag yourself out of the action and nothing your teammate can do to help. You got into this mess, and you’ve got to pitch yourself back out of it, too.

Baseball is a team sport, but also a deeply isolated game. Somehow, MLB The Show’s Diamond Dynasty co-op is able to evoke both of these seemingly at-odds facets of the sport, creating a challenging but rewarding co-op sports game experience in a time where there aren’t all that many of those left.

source https://www.polygon.com/opinion/547297/mlb-the-show-co-op-diamond-dynasty