Everyone wants to be a professional athlete growing up.
They want to play under the lights and feel the pressure of being a star.
But most fair at this, and when it sinks in that they will never make the pros, they want
to be a coach.
When this plans fails as well, they want to become GMs, and when that fails, they resort
to fantasy sports online.
Well now you can feel what it is like to be a baseball general manager in MLB Front Office
Manager for the PS3.
You get to be the big guy, the hot shot, the man who makes all the right moves and grabs
the big free agents.
You will get to know what goes through a GMs mind everyday.
And if this game is correct it is a lot of…
Boredom.
Look at all the cool things you get to do.
You get to read emails, just like a real GM gets to do.
You get to sign free agents and never get the trades you want, just like a real GM.
And you get to look through statistics to try and make a World Series winning team out
of a bunch of smucks, just like a real GM.
You load up the game and start your career as a GM.
And unlike real life you don’t have to start off as an intern, running and getting people’s
coffee while you dream of someday making someone run and get your coffee.
You design your alter ego from a couple very limited menus.
And get to see what you decide with some of the worst 3d models I’ve seen since the
early PS1.
I mean come on, it looks like a steroid feed monster with a small man’s head glued on
top.
After that, you pick which team you want to take control of.
Then decide if you want to more carefully manage funds with teams like the Royals or
Pirates, or if you want to buy yourself a World Series with the Yankees or Red Soxs
with their godly, unreal payrolls.
It is all up to you.
Then you get to start your exciting life as a GM.
You get to read your first emails, and get introduced to Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s
GM who is credited with inventing sabermetics even though Bill James was doing it years
before him.
He will send you emails and give you advice on every little thing.
You would think a game that is designed to revolve around menu navigating would have
very intuitive menus, right?
Wrong, they wanted to simulate the process of having people lose information in the offices
by making the menus as difficult to work with as possible.
Too often, the section that you will use the most, such as roster formation, is buried
deep within other menus.
But when you finally figure out what you need to do, you will find the things too difficult
to do.
The AI in the game makes it very difficult to get any trade down, let alone for a high
profile player.
I just want a super teams that can go 162-0, is that too much to ask for.
You can take control of the games and manage but that boils down to clicking through more
menus.
Menus, after menus, after menus, I won’t be able to handle a restaurant menu after
this game.
If you are dying to take control of a baseball team, do yourself a favor and skip this game
and pick up The Show.
You can do everything this game offers but with the added ability to actually play the
game.
That or wait until real baseball starts again and dream your fantasy trades.