Whether you’re someone who likes to experience every single pitch throughout the entire season, would rather dip in for pivotal moments here and there, or want to play your league games against other real people online rather than the CPU, the good news is that MLB The Show 22 has something for you. Between franchise mode, March To October, and Custom Leagues, MLB The Show 22 gives you variations on how you can set up and approach a season of baseball by allowing you to choose how much time and effort you would like to devote to it.
While all of these modes do deliver on their intentions and each serves a valuable purpose, there are also some limitations within them that still need to addressed if they are ever going to reach new heights. In fact, there’s the unmistakable stench of familiarity lingering in all three of the aforementioned modes, making it difficult at times to distinguish this year’s edition of the game from the last. To be fair, this isn’t entirely a blatant copy and paste job and there are a handful of worthwhile additions and important fixes in certain areas that needed to be addressed from a year ago. However, these still aren’t enough to shake the feeling that those of us who prefer to play these modes aren’t being given the same kind of attention as those who enjoy playing Diamond Dynasty and are being deprived of certain aspects they desire from a baseball video game.
Let’s go through each of the modes one-by-one and delve into what’s new and improved for them in MLB The Show 22, and then explore what needs to be done in the future in order to expand them and satiate the devoted masses that spend most of their time in the game trying to navigate the ebbs and flows that come with every season.
March To October
What’s New And Improved
Considering how long it would take someone to play each and every pitch of a 162-game season, March to October offers plenty of upside by shortening the experience to pivotal moments. Without question, the biggest update to the mode this year, and perhaps to any of these three modes in fact, is that March to October no longer just ends unceremoniously after finishing up one season, and instead allows you to make key free agent decisions in the offseason before starting up the following season. This adds some depth and complexity to the mode.
The other significant addition to March to October in MLB The Show 22 is the opportunity to fast track players in the minor leagues and then even call them up to the majors later on as the season progresses. This involves playing in a minor league game while locked as the player in question. Here you can provide him with a helpful boost and reach the majors faster if you’re able to deliver a superior performance. It’s an effective way to keep you connected to the prospects coming up in your system, and it makes a lot of sense to implement this at the same time the mode itself is being extended beyond a single season.
What Still Needs Work
Despite the new system of fast-tracking prospects within your farm teams being intriguing, it’s also extremely thin and could use some more options if it wants to provide a glimpse of what it’s like to be at the helm of a team. As it stands now, it’s downright strange to be given a choice of fast-tracking or calling up a player and only being presented with a single player as an option, so your choice then is only whether to fast track that one player or not.
How are there not other players within the minors who might be worthy of consideration as well? It might be interesting as well to explore the other side of the equation, where you’re tasked with deciding between a couple players who aren’t performing well at the major league level and sending one of them to the minors. On a more trivial note, I’ve also found there to be some issues with the way the some stats for my team play out throughout a season, as there seem to be certain relief pitchers positioned in high-leverage roles who aren’t logging many innings or appearances.
Franchise Mode
What’s New And Improved
The bittersweet thing about the updates to franchise mode in MLB The Show 22 is that they include some much-needed refinements to components of the mode that could be incredibly unrealistic and potentially game-breaking in the past, but there aren’t the kind of wholesale overhauls that many would have liked to see. Instead, the biggest step forward here may be a re-jiggering of the trade value of players to prevent some of the absolute robberies that would happen in last year’s game in which superstars would get traded away for a couple poor prospects that might as well have amounted to a mere bag of baseballs.
For the hardcore fans of franchise, it will be refreshing to see such core fundamentals to the mode like budgets, contracts, and real-life minor league players all the way down to the single-A level finally accurately represented in the game.
What Still Needs Work
All of the above assessments would likely fall under the “improved” part of the header, but you would be hard-pressed to find much with the franchise mode in MLB The Show 22 to file under the “new” column. Though it needs more than only a cosmetic overhaul, a fresh coat of paint would likely do the mode some good at this point, as the existing interface and menus have been around for long enough now that they have grown noticeably stale. The method used to assess the potential of players and prospects on a scale from A to D is just as limited as the few tiers of progression seen in Madden players.
It’s an especially disappointing system when you factor in how baseball is arguably the hardest sport to accurately gauge young talent and players who are projected to become all-stars can go bust all the time (just ask my keeper fantasy baseball team). Another big drawback for those who are perennial players of the game is that you’re still not able to carry over a franchise in which you may have invested a lot of time customizing to your own preferences in last year’s game.
Custom Leagues
What’s New And Improved?
Is there anything new or improved here at all? It seems to be nearly identical to what was offered last year when the mode was introduced as a limited option to allow people to play online in a league against friends.
What Still Needs Work
The most glaring problem with the custom leagues mode is that it’s not a proper franchise mode. Instead of allowing you to play through a number of seasons in which young players will develop and veterans see their skills gradually decline, you’re forced instead to start right back at square one again at the outset of the 2022 season every time you finish a World Series.
If you’re playing with the actual rosters of teams, this makes it decidedly harder to fill an entire league because any teams with a lot of young talent won’t ever be able to see those players turn into the kind of weapons who can consistently decide games. This is especially galling for anyone who has been playing the MLB The Show series for a long time time because we know that an online franchise mode that included progressing through multiple seasons was once a part of the game not that long ago.
Bottom Line
March to October continues to be a fun and fast way to play crucial moments throughout a season, and innovations to the mode this year allow you to have more control of your team while taking multiple shots at the World Series. Despite the scenarios becoming somewhat redundant over time and some improvements needed to how organizational choices play out as a season progresses, there’s no denying that the mode accomplishes what it sets out to do.
Franchise mode showcases some changes in MLB The Show 22 that should help ensure a higher level of realism when it comes to front office moves and monetary concerns, but there are no splashy new features and its entire look could use a makeover. While the custom leagues mode gives you the opportunity to play in an online league against friends, its limitations serve as a reminder that the series needs to bring back a real online franchise.
