One of my favorite things to do as a fan is second guess the moves the team makes. When I play video games, I’m always concerned more about the career mode options than the in game graphics and things of that sort. As a result, I’ve grown quite fond of a baseball series called Out of the Park Baseball. Now in it’s 10 edition, it’s easily one of my favorite games ever. I’m not a huge video game guy anymore. I don’t own a console and rarely have time to play more than about 15 or 20 minutes at a time. OOTP is great for just that. If you’ve never seen it, or know nothing about it, you can now try it for free since they just released a demo version of the game. If you decide to buy it, it’s $39.95. Here are some of the features I love and some that I wish they would improve on or add. Go out and grab this game from their website. You won’t be disappointed.
Detailed Financials – From incentive laden contracts to a new and improved arbitration system, this game is the most realistic in the series in this sense. You have a lot of customizable options as well, including optional salary cap, owner setting team budgets and average salary for various types of players. I can’t say enough about this aspect of the game.
Real Rosters – One of the big turn offs for a lot of folks is a lack of big league players when they download the game. Of course the forum community has done such a good job with rectifying that issue in the past, but now OOTP has used that to include 2009 rosters with the version, including a vast majority of players in the farm system. Very well done.
Tremendous Record Keeping & Stat output – I love looking back at seasons past in this game because of how much detail it gives you. The great thing about it, though, is that you can shut a lot of that stuff off as well to limit the amount of space the game takes up.
Other Notes from OOTP
We have recoded the entire pitching rating system including adding individual pitch ratings, reworking the endurance/role system and the impact of velocity and groundball percentage in the game engine. This results in the best and most realistic game and player development engine on the planet! Will your veteran ace keep his blazing fastball for another year? Will the youngster develop that promising changeup and become a dominating starter? The new system will change the way you play OOTP!
Now the user can set team budgets before an inaugural draft takes place, either all balanced, individually, or based on city population. Player have contract demands which combined must not exceed your draft budget, and the manager has to keep an eye on the budget when making his picks. The old mode without budgets is still available as well, of course. Can you draft the perfect team?
The injury system is a very important aspect of a realistic simulation engine. This year we have improved the model used in OOTP in order to recreate more realistic injury frequencies and durations.
Screenshots
I’ve been a fan of the Baseball Mogul series and have played nearly every version since 2004 or so. Might have to give OOTP a shot though. Anyone played both and have a preference?
moondog -
I play both. OOTP is just as Joe describes it – it is a beast of a sim. Mogul does not come close to the amount of info that is in OOTP. That being said, I like to play whole seasons at a time to see how a minor league guy develops and it is much, much quicker to use Mogul. So, I tend to play Mogul a lot more than OOTP unless I have a a day with nothing to do (which come very infrequently!)
I have played pretty much every baseball sim out there starting with Stratomatic when I was a kid and OOTP is the best and gets better every year. A definite purchase.