Spring is a time of renewal, for warm weather that thaws away winter, and blooming flowers that return color to the earth. For Major League Baseball, spring bears the same weight, as young rookies look to breakout at the highest professional level, hopeful teams hunt for the sport's biggest trophy, and a new MLB The Show title hits the market. With MLB The Show 24, developer San Diego Studio has retooled its approach after The Show 23's disappointing results. Like a team looking for a comeback season, MLB The Show 24 brings in new pieces to bolster what works, and shapes up its weaker elements.
The sports genre isn't known for making major changes year after year. An ongoing joke in the video game community is that the most any sports game changes is its rosters, but MLB The Show 24 finds ways to subvert that expectation in ways that are both subtle and widely felt. The Show has historically stuck out as unlike FIFA and Madden for its willingness to evolve at a more substantial pace, and The Show 24 is no exception. That's not to say there aren't any holes in SDS' swing, but as a total package, The Show 24 reasserts why the franchise has been the preeminent baseball sim on the market.
Why Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a Great Cover Athlete for MLB The Show 24
MLB The Show 24's cover athlete has finally been revealed to be the Blue Jays' Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and his impressive career backs up the choice.
MLB The Show 24: Breaking Barriers One Breaking Ball At A Time
MLB The Show 24's greatest innovations don't come from any major gameplay overhauls, though its mechanics are as tight as they've ever been. In this year's installment, SDS followed the example set by franchises like NHL by bringing women ballplayers into MLB The Show for the first time. This major step towards a more inclusive game is handled with respect and reverence, with The Show 24 acknowledging how groundbreaking its women ballplayers are, without making them feel lesser to their male counterparts.
Where this addition shines the most is in Road To The Show, which has received some overdue improvements across the board. MLB The Show 24 enhances the experience of progressing as a top prospect through well-produced cutscenes that chronicle each major step of a player's career, and "Impact Plays" that make diving for fly balls or throwing out runners much more engaging. Coming up with big hits or clutch pitches is also as rewarding as ever, both in terms of attribute and career progression.
MLB The Show 24's Storylines Shine
Storylines returns from MLB The Show 23, and it somehow feels even more impactful in The Show 24. The Negro League receives a second season of content, highlighting four pivotal figures at launch with the promise of more on the way. SDS also decided to expand its horizons with the game mode, introducing a new series based on the career of the iconic Derek Jeter. The hall of fame shortstop narrates some of the biggest moments throughout the first six years of his MLB tenure, providing anecdotes that should make any baseball historian swoon.
Jeter's Storylines will receive new chapters just like the Negro Leagues, and that dedication to adding free single-player content post-launch is a refreshing sight. No-strings-attached content is a rarity nowadays, and SDS sets a strong precedent by making Storylines something fans can depend on for free fun over The Show 24's lifecycle.
MLB The Show 24 is one of the strongest entries SDS has put out in this console generation.
Diamond Dynasty Breaks Its Cold Streak
Diamond Dynasty has been a highlight of The Show for much of the last decade, allowing fans to build a fantasy team of players both past and present. The Show 23 made attempts to spice up the game mode by altering its content model, but by the summer many fans had soured on its repetitive cards and minimized sense of progression. The Show 24 gets back to what made Diamond Dynasty such a marquee game mode, striking a balance between The Show 23's expedited seasonal model, and a more gradual power creep.
While it's impossible to say how this new structure will play out when new seasons come along, this updated approach to Diamond Dynasty looks to strike a fair balance. At the outset, players are encouraged to apply more strategic team-building practices using gold and low-tier diamond cards. When compared to The Show 23's flooding of high-tier diamond cards, there's a greater incentive for players to grow their team over many weeks instead of setting and forgetting it within a couple of days. If anything can be gleaned at the moment, it shows that SDS listens to its fans and takes feedback seriously.
MLB The Show 24: 10 Best Teams, Ranked
There are only a handful of teams that can compete for baseball supremacy, and these teams stand above the rest as the best in MLB The Show 24.
Hitting For Average, Not For Power
From a pure gameplay perspective, MLB The Show 24 doesn't reinvent the wheel. Hitting mechanics are largely unchanged, rewarding perfect timing and swing placement while offering useful feedback for when players have some holes in their swing. Defense has received some minor updates, if minor ones, now giving players a visual of the most optimal route to a ball.
The biggest changes can be found in pitching, as The Show's pinpoint pitching has been made more challenging. New movements for pitches like the splitter replicate the difficulty of throwing them in real life, and movements are now mirrored for left-handed pitchers to make them feel distinct from right-handed players. These updates may not seem significant, but they still serve as a quality-of-life change that ensures The Show's fundamental gameplay feels fresh to some degree.
MLB The Show 24 falls short in the graphical department, despite SDS' efforts to update player face models. While The Show 24's new face scans and hair physics are a step in the right direction, ballpark assets are still in need of a major overhaul. Fireworks at Cincinatti's Great American Ballpark or Wrigley Field's iconic foliage look like they could be from a PS3 game, and just about every field's grass looks closer to turf than the real thing. With Madden and other sports titles featuring graphics more in-line with today's console generation, The Show's graphical standard becomes more questionable year after year.
MLB The Show 24 is one of the strongest entries SDS has put out in this console generation. Storylines and Road To The Show's updates rejuvenate the franchise's single-player offerings, giving players a reason to come back each day and get a few swings in. Diamond Dynasty's changes are also a step in the right direction, though it will take time to see if SDS' new format works in the long run. While The Show is well overdue for a more substantial facelift, its rewarding gameplay makes that shortcoming an afterthought. When all's said and done, MLB The Show 24 is undoubtedly one of the series' best, and a great sign for the future.
MLB The Show 24
Reviewed on PS5
San Diego Studio's MLB The Show 24 provides an in-depth baseball sim experience, allowing players to work their way up from the minor leagues to the World Series.
- Wealth of engaging single-player modes
- Diamond Dynasty feels rewarding again
- New face scans are a marked improvement
- Pinpoint pitching has more layers
- Stadiums need a graphical upgrade
- Hitting and fielding fail to innovate
MLB The Show 24 is available March 19, 2024, for PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Game ZXC was provided with a PS5 code for this review.
