The popularity of „American“ sports is still where it’s always been. We consider basketball our as our sport, we play American football fairly seriously, hockey has it`s fan base, and baseball remains a pastime for but a few fans. Yes, we have a few baseball clubs and from time to time it’s possible to see a live stream of a game, but probably for the majority of our readers the most contact that they had with this sport was through the movie „Moneyball“. We’re centuries away from the popularity that this sport has on its native soil or in Japan, most likely because it’s more interesting to play than to watch.
However, let’s get back to the movie „Moneyball“. The movie in which a small group of people (and Brad Pitt) attempts to manage a club by looking for players whose stats blend together, and build a successful team for a (relatively) small amount of money. In addition to being based on a true story, this movie represents the best way to play management games like Football Manager, or Out of the Park Baseball 16. We know almost everything about FM, and you will see that OOTPB is not too dissimilar and your previous knowledge of Football Manager could be very helpful.
Baseball is Heaven for statisticians, for those concerned with advanced analytics and who just love to turn sport into a game of numbers and mathematical operations. A management game is a database of numbers and mathematical operations which, with a bit of imagination, simulates sport. It is clear that managers and baseball are meant to coexist, and OOTPB16 (as well as several previous iterations) illustrate this claim with great success.
Out of the Park Baseball 16 is, therefore, a comprehensive spreadsheet with a bunch of tables that represent the world`s biggest leagues and clubs, professional players, youth players, coaches, free agent lists, potential trades, drafts and all the other parts of this sport. It is a game where you will be able to control every aspect of the club which you’ve chosen and fully devote to endless small details – from training, through tactics, to running the match itself. But it`s not just a dull pile of statistics; while playing the game you’ll face real life-like situations that your players and club may face. Players may fight among themselves, the control may catch them after getting doped (doping scandals have already been shaking baseball for the past few years), they may get arrested for racing on the highway in the dead of night…
The beautiful thing about this title is that it can be played by people of different affinities differentiated by the amount of stats and control they want to have. The game can be slower and more demanding, but also faster and more relaxed; it all depends on your style, and the experience can be equally enjoyable. This can even be seen when starting the game, when it is possible to play with already established leagues, or create a whole new world of baseball according to your wishes, whether it’s a league with characters from your favorite show, or a completely realistic representation of our local baseball league.
You can follow the matches as a unique combination of teletext and direct broadcast displayed in 3D. Unfortunately, although the 3D display is an improvement, it’s still not top level, but it’s something that the development team is working on, and what we can expect either in one of the frequent game updates, or in a future version.
This manager’s strong core of fans claims that Out of the Park Baseball is the best series of this type. Fans of the Football Manager may not agree with this statement, but we have to admit that there is something to it… If you are a fan of managers, try OOTP. It’s likely that you’ll like it, even if baseball is not your type of sport.
Author: Luka Zlatić
Out of the Park Baseball 16
Pros:
- Informations and options are detailed and clear
- Adaptable to all player’s demands
- A superb manager game
Cons:
- Missing player portraits
