MLB Front Officer Manager

Not good. Really, really, not good.

Could be good. Some neat ideas.

But in the end...

Really, really, unmistakeably -- a bad game.

Aaron Harang finishes the year with a 3.03 ERA -- and wins 3 games and loses 22.

The Reds win a total of 24 games.

Chipper Jones hits .410

19 TEAMS hit for over .300 and the Dodgers, as a team, hit .324.

These are all one-off examples but they are not exceptions to the rule -- and that rule is that this is no NFL Head Coach and OOTP laughs at its attempt to be a manage sim.

Did you know that during the games you can't see player ratings? Want to know who this guy is batting for the opponent? Good luck with that. I also can't find a way to activate a one-pitch mode. You can speed up the play but you'd think a one-pitch mode would have been on the design table from day one. Maybe I just can't find it.

Which leads me to the next frustration -- the interface. Want to know the League Leader in..oh..doubles? No dice. You get League Leaders in Homers, RBI and Avg. That's it. Not to mention the small details like when you view a player's individual stats that you need to scoll over to view the important stuff. So when you click on a pitcher you get his starts, shutouts, complete games, etc. but to see ERA and other valuable data -- you need to scroll. Why? Why not have what most people want to know right on the front screen?

Anyway, pass on this. I think there are some good ideas here and the game tries to incorporate a lot of off season rules (Rule V drafting, pick compensation, etc.) as well as detailed scouting stuff, but there is absolutely no reason to play this over a game like OOTP -- the graphical display is nice but stat heads are a differnt breed -- most simmers don't need the pictures. It would be nice, and if you could take OOTP's GAME (and interface) and throw in the graphics, well, that would be 5 ways of awesome -- but without stat integrity it all breaks down -- especially in a baseball game.

The Show's demo comes out next week. All you need to know.