Text-based sports management sims have come into their own heyday recently, and one of the franchises that’s been around since before they became cool again is the Out of the Park Baseball series by Out of the Park Developments and published by PISD Software. The latest iteration, OOTP 9, is a game that had a generously-sized development team for a game of this type – seven people.
That team includes two lead developers, three team members who did extra coding, an art designer and a product manager. Considering most games in this genre are a one- or two-developer labor of love, that’s a huge staff. Of course, modern PS3/360 platform sports videogames like Madden NFL 09 or MLB 2K9 probably have PR departments, motion-capture staffs and memberships in the wine of the month clubs that are considerably larger than that – but that’s not the sort of game this is.
As a PC-centric text-based sports management sim, the emphasis of Out of the Park Baseball 9 is not on bleeding-edge 256-bit HD graphics, but on statistically-solid, realistic gameplay. If that’s your kind of thing – and L-RD knows, baseball stats fans like their games realistic – then OOTP 9 might be the baseball sim for you.
It’s been more than one iteration since the last time I checked out OOTP, and one of the first things that jumped out at me is the interface improvements since the last time I played a demo of the game, back around OOTP Baseball 6.
The menu is large, clear and self-explanatory, and includes friendly options for those who are upgrading from previous versions of the franchise, so that they can at least try to continue their dynasties in the new version. As I didn’t have any old save files from a previous version, I wasn’t able to test this feature, but word on the chat boards seems to indicate that it’s been a relatively smooth transition, though not without some rare and minor issues.
Once you actually get started selecting your team and such, OOTP’s “manager home page” system is laid out in three-columns and is organized and self-explanatory enough to be both appealing and not a huge hurdle to accessibility. You’ll always know where your team stands, thanks to this handy layout, and while you are offered a “play today” option for games where the game can unfold pitch-by-pitch, there are also four auto-sim options that will soon become the way most folks will eventually navigate their way through a season.
The menus are all clearly defined and easy to understand, the sim-screen adds a fun visual 2D element, and if you play through a single game pitch-by-pitch, the 2D display is serviceably but never forgets that it’s a 2D, text-based, sports management sim. (That’s intended as a compliment.)
Full of stats galore, powerful player search tools, and plenty of ways to use the game as a basis for a multiplayer league, OOTP 9 is a solid entry in the series and sets a standard others in the genre will have to meet or exceed to be considered “in the game.” OOTP 9 is already a step ahead of Baseball Mogul in that it features a more flexible financial model that scales to the era appropriately; and it’s interface is superior to PureSim Baseball 2007, though Shaun Sullivan is now hard at work relaunching his franchise for Wolverine Studios under the Draft Day Sports: Baseball moniker.
But until that competitor emerges for comparison, it can be clearly stated that Out of the Park Baseball 9 is the clear standard-setting this summer when it comes to PC-based baseball management sims. With a great feature set, a superior interface and top-notch organization and design, as well as realistic results, it would be hard to name a currently-available competitor that is even … in the ballpark.
Tags: Out of the Park Baseball 9, wine of the month clubs
