Game Pass First Impressions: MLB The Show 21

By Luke Albigés,

Here's a curveball for you: what's the strangest thing you've ever seen when launching an Xbox game? Whatever your pick is (and I'm sure it's brilliant, well done), I'd wager this one takes the biscuit:

That's right, upon launching MLB The Show 21, you get splash screens for Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Studios, and San Diego Studio, a Sony subsidiary. It's a wild ride, and one almost worth using your Game Pass powers just to experience. Still, it doesn't hurt that The Show 21 is also a hell of a lot of fun, even if you know as little about Rounders For Adults as I do. It turns out I'm the TA news team's most qualified person to tackle a baseball game, and that's purely on account of having been to one single ball game when I was in the US once, knowing what RBI stands for, and having played and enjoyed a bunch of other (admittedly simpler) baseball games in the past. The bar ain't exactly high here, people, but I'm hoping to turn that weakness into a strength — to let folks who might not be that into the sport itself know that the Game Pass library now offers an accessible, quick-fire sports game where even genre idiots like me can have a good time.

There's a ridiculous amount of game here, so I'm not exactly sure where to begin. I do know where not to begin now, though, and that's the Road to the Show mode. While the entire point of this mode is taking your custom character on a rags-to-riches journey from hot prospect to MLB all-star, the allure of this mode — peppered as it is with real-world talking heads, which often works to surprising effect despite how vague they all are in their commentary — is outshone by the fact that every single one of the game's systems are harder to work when your stats are lower. It's a cool mode and one I intend to dive deeper into later, but it wasn't until I tried out the other options that I realised just how hard you make things for yourself trying to learn a game when weak stats influence the difficulty of every single mechanic so much. Jump into a random game with the big league teams and you'll have ages to make your plays; jump into lower level stuff and the blink-and-you'll-miss-it gauges will demand perfection. On that note, I do really enjoy how confidence and 'zone' stuff impacts the game — it makes sense that giving up runs as a pitcher would rattle you and make follow-ups harder to land cleanly, and I'm not sure I've seen this kind of thing handled so well in a sports game before. Let a batter off the hook early and the rest of the inning will be a nightmare, although well-played sequences can restore a little composure and get things back on track. It's a fun way of piling on the pressure, and it helps make sure that every pitch or swing counts.

mlb the show 21 game pass first impressions

The sheer amount of game modes on offer is absurd. Speedy games for those who just want a one-and-done; leagues for those who want to go deeper; career management modes; a retro mode with simplified controls and pixelated visuals; partial games when there's no need to play a whole match; quick games and tourneys... hell, there's even a hex-based strategy mode called Conquest which is the mix of Risk, baseball, and SmallWorld you never knew you needed in your life. The entire game actually has a fantastic sense of letting you play your own way, all the way down from the broad and varied selection of modes to the core gameplay mechanics. When you first start up The Show, you're dropped into a dummy game where you can try out the various batting, pitching, and fielding options to see what works for you. There are pure analog options for folks who like to do everything with the sticks, timing gauges akin to simple golf games, bespoke systems that will likely take some getting used to, precision modes for people that want full control... it's all incredibly user-friendly and means you'll soon find a setup that works for you, and it's both interesting and likely that you could sit down to play with a friend only to find that the two of you use completely different interfaces.

After trying them all out, I settled on gauge-based pitching and was able to find my rhythm pretty quick, picking up strikeouts left and right even as the dynamic difficulty scaled up to meet my performance. At the plate, though, I'm a mess. I understand the systems just fine and the constant feedback the game offers on timing and positioning is really helpful, but dealing with a pitcher with a solid arsenal of 100mph fastballs and mind-boggling curveballs is still proving too much for me. I'm just too eager to swing at anything and everything, which I put down partly to a lack of patience and discipline, and partly to not knowing the sport itself well enough to know what a 'normal' At Bat should look like. I'm slowly improving, but Road to the Show really isn't the place to be finding your feet with this stuff, since every wild swing and strikeout negatively impacts your player's stats. Seems like it's better to hone your craft in any other the myriad other modes, then work on bringing up your custom superstar once you can actually step up to the plate without embarrassing yourself. It was cool that the talking heads acknowledged this shortcoming and took to discussing my dismal batting game, suggesting the two-way player role might be too much for me. Right now, it is — you need to be excelling in all fields to get the all-round stat boosts needed to rise to the top, but right now, my throwing and catching are the only things keeping me from being a permanent bench-warmer.

Still, The Show is great to watch even when you do end up sitting out a few innings. Presentation is superb, with the default setting giving a great mix of broadcast angles and impressive replays without shoving every single piece of action in your face for a second or third time. There's the option to skew that one way or the other if you would rather revel in replays or stick to pure gameplay, but the standard setting delivers a good enough balance between the two that I never felt the need to do so. Play-by-play isn't quite up to the same standard, sadly, and the fast-paced nature of the game means that the commentators often end up falling some way behind the action or tripping over one another. On top of that, the staccato chunk-based nature of the dialogue — "San Francisco... are struggling to get back into this one" — feels like something we should have moved beyond now we're no longer having to have those individual bits of audio loaded from physical media on the fly, and it really puts a downer on the overall sheen of a game that otherwise could almost pass for a TV broadcast at times. Worse yet, the issue extends to lower-level and custom player names, which could easily have been avoided by just using either surname or first name for those guys, instead of both with an awkward pause between as if the announcer is struggling to remember a family name only to then deliver it in a completely different tone. It's not the end of the world and the rest of the presentation is strong enough to carry it anyway, and watching back replays shows just what a crazy amount of nuance there is to the animations and visuals that help bring the game to life.

As for the achievements, it's not the most taxing of lists, although it'll likely take you quite a while if you plan to play the game normally. Most can be fast-tracked by dropping the difficulty right down and simming games to get through seasons faster, although there are a couple that might still trip you up. Breaking a bat as a pitcher is somewhat random but should be doable eventually if you focus your fastballs on trying to hit around the handle, while seeing ten pitches in one visit to the plate will be a challenge as it involves fouling off at least five throws without being struck out or walked. Guides suggest that a combination of the simplified retro mode and lower difficulty settings can make some of these easier, so there definitely seem to be ways to smash through the list if you're so inclined, but I'm happy enough to take my time and grab the achievements over time as I get to grips properly with a game I wasn't expecting to enjoy nearly as much as I have been.

Summary

MLB The Show 21 is the kind of game that I'd imagine nobody in their right mind would pick up for full price if they weren't already a fan of the sport or the series, but with it sat there temptingly on Game Pass, I have to encourage everyone — no matter your familiarity with the sport itself — to give it a crack. Gameplay is super fun, presentation slick, and it's as accessible or challenging as you want it to be, with hundreds of modes and options to mess with to get the exact quick-fire sports experience you're looking for.

Luke has put around ten hours into MLB The Show 21 so far, trying out multiple modes across both Xbox Series X and Series S. He popped just five achievements in the process, mostly because he is kinda bad at baseball.

More MLB The Show 21 stories:

First Impressions

Written by Luke Albigés

Luke runs the TA news team, contributing where he can primarily with reviews and other long-form features — crafts he has honed across two decades of print and online gaming media experience, having worked with the likes of gamesTM, Eurogamer, Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, and many more. He loves all things Monster Hunter, enjoys a good D&D session, and has played way too much Destiny.