Sean A Sullivan

There’s always that one guy in the crowd, the heckler. He goes to game after game loaded with a copy of the opposing team’s roster annotated with all kinds of clever mockery and word plays on visiting player’s names. I had a friend in college who had a voice that could pierce the entire crowd. In fact, at one Michigan State basketball game he got the referee’s attention and received a hand motion for what was perceived as a warning. No longer does my friend need to be such a die hard attendee at real life sporting events to pursue his dream as a heckler. Nope, Sony is going to bring the action home in next spring’s installation of MLB: The Show.

The Show is standing at the top of the heap as the best baseball franchise running right now. In fact, I picked it up this year because I was so stunned by the attention to detail. The detail of each player’s stance and style was so amazing. The models of each and every ball park were so amazing. However, like we see with most sports games, since the game mechanic doesn’t really change from year to year, sometimes the developers have to get a little gimmicky to make us feel compelled to buy into their “subscription model,” (as Jeff Tunnell refers to it.)

For this year’s version of The Show, one of the major add-ons, improvements, enhancements, features is the ability to record your own heckling! Yes, that’s right! Now you can do all the trash talking you want into your PS3’s headset. By recording your trash talking to the system’s memory, it can played back for your buddy when he’s sitting next to your on your couch and his player steps up to bat. While the crowd environment aspect is a logical part of baseball to add some enhancements to, this seems like a lame way to “improve” the game.

MLB 09 is about to bring out the crazed fan in all of us as not only can you record your voice screaming anything from “Where’s Madonna?” to “we want a pitcher not a belly itcher” and put it in the game thanks to peripherals like the Rock Band mic and wireless headset, the fan yells will sound like your voice actually coming from the stands.

I’ve also read that Sony is focusing on enhancements to online league participation and management. Here’s what I wish, before adding in all these wonderful improvements, of which I’m sure a certain percentage of the customer base will take advantage, I wish they would first spend their development resources on making the online aspect of their baseball game work. Note, this year’s past version of the game was virtually unplayable due to latency issues. Just another case of priorities in the wrong place? Well, at least we can drop our $60 to pick up a copy of MLB: The Show — Heckler’s Edition.