Some of them are even quite specialized; you don’t get just generic guitar controllers, but can — for a princely sum — get something name-brand and fancy like a Gibson SG. The trouble is, eventually, all these music games are pretty much alike, so the choice comes down to the game’s selection of songs.

That’s why I like the Music Wars series, currently from Wolverine Studios. The developer, Antuan Johnson, got his start with a feature-slim freeware version and took it commercial a couple years ago with Music Wars: Rebirth.

That’s why I’m excited to hear he’s in the open beta stage of his next massive update of this game. By focusing on simulating the music industry itself, the focus is less on whether a person can hit all the notes in order, and more on one’s evaluation of talent and such.

The updated game is said to have a ton of feature improvements to make it a deeper game experience than ever.

I, for one, can’t wait.

I really wanted to kick the tires on this edition of the game. I explored every feature I could think of, tried the game not only based on the 2011 season, but starting from several historical periods as well.

I wanted to be sure the game was tight, solid, and bullet-proof. As I write this, the brilliant, baseball-savvy folks at Out of the Park Developments have released Update #4 to the game, and so the bulk of this review is based on that release.

Let’s put it this way: I applied more scrutiny to this edition of Out of the Park Baseball than any other edition I’ve ever reviewed. The team at OOTP Developments, I’m sure, wondered if I’d ever get around to actually reviewing the game. But that was never in question; the truth is… OOTP Baseball 12 is just so impressive, so engaging, and so deep you just can’t tear yourself away from it for long.

That’s a good thing, if you’re wondering.

You see, lots of companies do baseball games. Not many eat, sleep, drink, and live baseball the way the good folks at OOTP Developments do. And it shows through in the game.

While it’s still a game and playing it will offer some varied results based on your own interaction with it, each and every historical season I opened was… historically accurate. Not just generally, either. To a tee. If there are inaccuracies here, they lie far beyond my own baseball IQ and, therefore, my ability to detect.

I mean, look at it this way. Several years ago, when I wrote a lot more videogame reviews per year than I do now, I could pick up a copy of, say, EA Sports’ major league baseball game, play it for a couple hours, and write, “Ehh, they got most of the major league roster right, but the minor leagues are woefully inaccurate, and you can only play through ten seasons in franchise mode.”

And while I’d flesh it out, by the time I discovered flaws like that, the game was ruined for me and I had an easy time setting it aside, thinking “maybe next year,” and moving on to the next videogame in my review pile.

I can’t do that with Out of the Park Baseball. Not ever, really. And especially not with this year’s version. It’s the kind of game that tosses you back to your high school years, when you loved baseball just because, and your biggest worry was promise ring etiquette. It’s that pure a baseball experience.

I’m sure PS3 and Xbox 360 owners are reading this and thinking, “What the heck is he talking about? It’s a freaking PC text-management sim! There’s virtually no graphics, no high-def, it’s just text and some retro background graphics and such. Nothing to write home about.”

But if your idea of baseball is 256-bit graphics and 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound and Dual Shock 3/EyeStation integration and such, well… that’s not the heartbeat of baseball.

The heartbeat of baseball is in the stats and the details and the history of the game and getting it all right. Right, not just because you did your research with a Baseball Encyclopedia, but right because you’ve loved the game since you were old enough to understand it, and you remember more than just the magic moments of your favorite team’s first pennant win, but because you remember who they drafted in the 20th round in 1956 by heart, even though that was 10 years before you were born, because you just… love… the game.

That’s the kind of passion that can’t be defined by a business plan, a release strategy, or whatnot. (And, oh yeah, in addition to the PC version, there’s now an iPod Touch/iPad version of the game this year!)

That kind of passion, it’s just either there, or it isn’t. Out of the Park Baseball 12 bleeds that kind of passion from its pores. The love shows.

So, after taking longer than I’ve ever taken to evaluate a videogame, I find myself both exhausted and a little bit in love. Because this is a game I can’t find noticeable faults in. Everything it sets out to be, it is.

So, I could regale you with a long list of features and improvements lifted straight off the press release, if you wanted those kinds of details. But that’s not what a review should be.

A review should tell you if a game is fun. (It is.) If it’s addictive. (Yup… look how long I took to review it.) If it’s satisfying. (Very much so.) If it’s hard to put down, or easy to set aside. (Try impossible to put down.) Most of all, it should tell you if the game is worth your hard-earned sheckles in a rough, difficult economy like we current have.

My verdict? If you love baseball at all, Out of the Park Baseball 12 just simply is the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be (until next year’s version). It’s the Bret Hart of baseball sims.

And that’s what’s important for you to know. The rest, you can get off a press release.

That new franchise is a significant departure from his wrestling/MMA background. Comic Book Hero: The Greatest Cape, promises to become the first superhero-centric text-based management sim, well… ever. According to Grey Dog’s press release, the game will “see the player take control of a super hero and guide them through their career as a costumed crime fighter, dealing not only with the ongoing threat of villains but also relationships with other characters and the expectations of the cities you are sworn to protect!”

It certainly sounds promising. Sure, it may not be as unique as ordering personalized wedding gifts fast, but if you have a gamer whose getting married, reserving their copy of this game might be just as welcomed by them as a matching set of coffee cups with the bride and groom’s names on them.

Ryland has revealed that in its first version, the game will focus solely on the heroic side of the coin, since getting a new franchise off the ground is such massive work, and perfecting the heroic experience is get to the game’s success; however, he has admitted that if the game goes over well, adding a “villain’s side” experience to the franchise will be on the agenda.

While fans are sure to hope that Ryland will eventually return to Total Extreme Wrestling in time for a 2012 version, Comic Book Hero is expected to release sometime this year, in 2011. We’ll be watching for it with interest.

While I corrected the review, it’s never sat right with me, so I’ve played with TEW 2008 ever since, and recently decided to upgrade to TEW 2010 to see how the series had matured. And boy, am I glad I did.

In 2008 in the CornellVerse, Australia, where I like to play, was this nice, quiet little country with only four territories where Australian Pro Wrestling was allowed to play unfettered. That meant I could book talent however I liked, because even if they got pissed and left APW for a while, they’d eventually have to return. After all, there was no one else to sign with unless they became big enough to attract the interest of a foreign promotion. It also meant that APW owner J. James McMinister could hold a grudge against one of the country’s top workers, The Comedian, and hold him off the wrestling scene indefinitely with no repercussions.

Not so in the 2010 version. Advancing the CornellVerse a couple years in timeline, Australia is now a hotbed of pro wrestling action with three promotions struggling to get over with fans. In addition to APW, two other promotions exist: Deep Impact Wrestling and Revolution Australian Wrestling: Impact.

If one begins, as I did, with APW, they find themselves a bit bigger than DIW and smaller than RAW Impact. And only if one books wisely will APW rank as the number two promotion in the early going. And yes, The Comedian, sworn enemy of APW owner McMinister, is the head of one of the new promotions.

As the game opens, all three promotions are at war; and it took about six sims for me to really notice. I had Swoop McCarthy holding my top belt, in a feud with Nathan McKenzie, and they were the top act blowing out arenas throughout primarily Western Australia.

Then, for storyline purposes and to avoid repetitive booking, I decided to have Swoop drop the title to McKenzie to add some freshness to the feud, fully intending to put the strap back on Swoop a couple months down the line. But that’s when RAW Impact struck.

Suddenly I received, with no warning, an email that RAW Impact had signed my top star, Swoop McCarthy, to a new deal and he would be leaving APW in a week. I was devastated because no one in APW is more bankable than Swoop McCarthy. I then realized there were some teeth behind this “at war” status between APW, DIW and RAW Impact.

The signing happened just before a match I’d been promoting all month that promised a three-way dance for the Commonwealth title between Swoop, McKenzie, and relatively new signee, Maurice Jackson. I substituted Boo Smithson for Jackson on the day before the match, but the damage was done and the event suffered from the loss of Swoop. I had been hoping Swoop’s final week with APW would include the event, but he left the company officially the day of the event, so I had no chance to run the original match but bury Swoop in a dominating match by McKenzie.

After my monthly event was over, I became revenge-minded. I scoured RAW Impact’s roster and looked for as many of their stars as seemed to be on level with Swoop or better. I started negotiations with Captain Wrestling II, Kerry Wayne, and Rahmel Goode and signed them all away from RAW. Then, just to be preemptive, I signed the only two good wrestlers on Deep Impact’s roster, Warmonger and Dumphrey Pinn.

So, yes, I lost one main eventer, but I gained five solid guys ranging from Main Eventer to Midcarder in return; all of them rated as well on their skills as Swoop McCarthy. I then reached into the dirty trick bag and ran some of those against RAW.

My long-term strategy now? In this more hostile Australian wrestling scene, I have to be savvier to survive, but the plan is to try to lure DIW into at least a truce since they are so small, or eventually have them become allies with APW so that we can take on the larger threat of RAW Impact together.

Sure, this is just a tiny peek into one small corner of the CornellVerse, but it should get across at least one important message: Total Extreme Wrestling 2010 took everything that worked in 2008, and ramped it up to the next level. There are new tools in one’s arsenal, just as new angles, new match types and so forth; but the biggest improvement is the the challenge level.

Also, thanks to a new roster balancing feature, even in a little corner of the CornellVerse, there is now a better balance of talent, especially additional workers like referees, road agents and so forth. One of the early tools I found helping me compete against RAW Impact, is that I signed a much better road agent than I’d had when the game started: the Original Lone Rider. He’s the best-rated road agent in Australia, including those working for DIW and RAW Impact, and so my matches are improved as a result.

It’ll be a long road ahead before APW wins a TV contract and can become tops in the great Down Under; but now there are real stakes and challenges to that quest. Top recommendation.

With Inside the Park Baseball, you create a character from scratch, get drafted, and work your way up the minor league system with a goal of reaching the majors. While there’s plenty of baseball in the game, other details of player life pop up, too. What kind of workout regimen will you choose? If you’re out in a bar after a game, will you allow yourself to be baited into a fight with a disgruntled fan?

There are choices to make and many of them help fill out the full game experience; fortunately, it’s not quite as detailed as expecting your player to write oxyelite pro reviews, but it’s still pretty darn detailed. There’s a demo available; it’s worth a look.

No, Wolverine Studios has already released PureSim Baseball 4 from Scott Sullivan, and very soon here, Out of the Park Developments is expected to release this season’s version of Out of the Park Baseball 12, their latest offering. While PureSim 4 will have a few weeks lead-time, the two titles appear headed to release dates close enough that they can be compared directly.

Right now, I have PureSim 4 in hand and am merely awaiting the release of OOTP Baseball 12. Will the competition be close? We’ll find out soon, so keep your Howard poc carts at the ready, folks!

Also in baseball videogame news, Out Of the Park Baseball 12 isn’t out yet, but I’ll certainly be interested to see how the two games stack up feature for feature this season, since they are both releasing in roughly the same time frame. Whoo!

And the drawing is even open to those who pre-ordered (but didn’t win last month’s drawing) prior to February. That’s pretty darn nice, right? You can find out more here.

And if that doesn’t excite you, you probably need a round of effective fat burners more than the Yankees roster does… and that’s saying something!

For those of you not in the know, Out of the Park Baseball is the gold standard of pro baseball PC sports management sims. It does it all, and better than any of its competitors; of course, being around for eleven previous iterations kind of has that effect; they’ve been at it longer than anyone else.

So if you’re thinking about getting the game at all, pre-order before the month is out and get yourself a chance to receive an iPad 2 in the bargain. What kind of no-brainer is that, right?

But lately my wife’s been hooked on Shaiya and I decided to check it out because it was more of an RPG than an RTS. I will say that for a game that’s free, it’s not bad. I’d compare it favorably to Dungeons and Dragons Online. The graphics are not spectacular, but they are good enough, and it is like playing a PS3 or 360 RPG in some respects.

The biggest difference is that console RPGs just have better stories and graphics, in my opinion. As an occasional visitor, Shaiya is sometimes a good distraction or stress-break. But I can see how it could become an obsession, so I’ll be careful how often I fire it up.

I’ve been able to watch Out of the Park Baseball 11 develop from its late beta stages to its current and more recent release, and I will say that I’ve been impressed once again, as I have been for the last few versions I’ve reviewed, with how in-touch Out of the Park Developments stays with the feedback of their beta-testing team as well as the users of the game. Issues that have been brought up have been addressed and patched with reassuring frequency, and issues that created problems early on have been addressed. This sort of ongoing support is likely why OOTP Developments has endured through ten editions of its game and is now beginning its second decade.

As usual, I prefer to judge a baseball game by looking at how accurately they capture the Minnesota Twins. This isn’t purely capricious on my part; first, the Twins are my home-state team and the only team I feel I actually know well enough to compare them to their videogame representation. And as a smaller-market team, if a developer gets the details on the Twins right, you can usually be assured they got the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and A’s right as well.

First of all, I must point out that OOTP 11 has been surprisingly accurate on the Twins this time out. Their entire minor-league system is correct down to contract details, including the staffing of those minor-league teams; for example, Joe Mauer’s brother Jake is listed as manager of one of the Twins’ minor-league teams; I checked it out and they got it exactly right. That’s something that can’t be said for 2K Sports’ MLB titles, or even for Sony’s, over in the console world.

So what about simulation accuracy? Well, I simulated the Twins 2010 season up to the current date without making any changes to the team other than those generated by the game, such as injuries. To eliminate bias, I even had the CPU manager shuffle things around when such injuries arose.

As I write this review, the real-life Twins are 33-24. At 57 games into the 2010 season, the Twins in OOTP Baseball 11 stand at 32-25. While the scores were obviously mildly different from the real-life results, to get within one game of reality, albeit with a fictional injury list generated by the game, is proof to me that the folks behind OOTP Baseball 11 are NOT just making wild guesses and designing the game around biases toward favorite or popular teams.

Of course, I’ve come to expect this sort of accuracy from OOTP Baseball over the years; their game isn’t always a perfect prognosticator, but it does a better job than most baseball fans on any given day of the week. I’ve also gone on to play the off-season, and it’s a valid engine for simulating the sort of trades other clubs will agree to and which ones they won’t; it isn’t often that one robs another team blind in a trade in OOTP 11. To get someone of value, you must surrender players of like value.

The closest I’ve come to any sort of “steal” in OOTP 11 is a trade for center-fielder Andrew McCutcheon; I offered up one legit starter of 4.0-star value and two young prospects, but that wasn’t enough to get the deal done; the team I was bargaining with countered, asking for any one of five other prospects to be added to the deal.

I tossed in one of those players and they hemmed and hawed, but finally agreed to the deal at the Winter Meetings.

I gave up a starter and three very good young players to get a 4.5-star quality center-fielder. The four-for-one deal reflects the sort of deal-making that must be done to obtain someone of value. While it looks one-sided now, my McCutcheon deal reminded me a bit of the Twins-Giants trade that sent A.J. Pierzinski to San Fran in exchange for Francisco Liriano, Boof Bonser and Joe Nathan.

At the time, none of those three had proven themselves in the majors and Pierzinski was well-thought-of. That Pierzinski bombed after that, while Nathan became one of the best closers in the majors, Liriano had an amazing first year for the Twins before injuries set in, and Boof Bonser was a journeyman is the hindsight of the deal.

The talent I gave up to secure McCutcheon might blossom as well; McCutcheon seemed a great fit with the Twins when I made the trade, but his career was marred by injuries in successive seasons that held him back from fulfilling all my expectations, though he warmed the seat nicely for a draft pick center-fielder I’d picked up the summer before the trade. Also, the deal freed up salary space for me to keep much of my Twins intact for a few more seasons.

Of course, this reflects the organic nature of the game; even a deal that seems one-sided at the time doesn’t always turn out that way. After all, for every A.J. Pierzinski trade the Twins have made and come away from looking wise, they’ve had moments when they’ve looked foolish, such as being forced to cut David Ortiz for no compensation, before Big Papi blossomed with the Red Sox. Or trading away Johann Santana to the Mets for, well… no one who’s worked out all that great. Might as well say, “nothing.”

In that sense, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is sometimes a bit smarter than the real-life sport it is simulating, since it allows fewer block-headed deals.

What has impressed me this season more than in previous years is the historical simulation aspect of OOTP 11, which goes back as far as professional baseball has been played, and brings you up to the modern era. While Baseball Mogul does this, it does so without an historically-accurate financial model. While not quite perfect, OOTP 11 is much better on even that front.

Specifically, the game allows you to select starting a league in pretty much any year since the inception of professional baseball. It then takes you through a six-step wizard which allows you to customize your historical simulation to a preferred level of historical detail.

One of the details you can select is an accurate financial model. As the game explains it, “If you select to begin in 1940, ticket prices, attendance, salaries and the like will seem low, but will increase as time progresses.”

While I haven’t had the time to test out all 100+ years of professional baseball history to be certain that this accuracy is maintained year-to-year in career mode, I can vouch for the fact that, whatever year you choose to start in, the financial model is accurate to that year.

In this respect, Out of the Park Baseball 11 is far and away a superior historical simulator compared to the only other PC baseball management sim I’ve played that has attempted this, Baseball Mogul. BM has an inflexible financial model, meaning that while BM allows you to start at the inception of baseball and play to modern day, it all happens using the modern financial model. That means that in the Depression Era, you have Babe Ruth in the 1930s getting paid $20 million a season, while 60,000 fans per day flock in at ticket prices ranging from $20-$250 per ticket, and buying concessions like $5 hot dogs and $7 beer. In the Depression Era? Some Depression!

That doesn’t occur in Out Of the Park Baseball 11; the 1930s financial model reflects a 1930s economy. The amount of historical research alone required to achieve this is nothing short of dizzying! And yet, here it is. A truly impressive accomplishment that has made its impact on me as a reviewer more strongly this year than in any previous release of the game. In fairness, OOTP has been at it for a while, fine-tuning this aspect of the game before OOTP Baseball 11… but the realization of it in this year’s release has really impressed me with its attention to minute detail.

Not perfect? True. But very close.

In fairness to Baseball Mogul, by the way, that game is made for a younger, less demanding audience; Out of the Park Baseball 11′s audience is the true stats-obsessed baseball geek, and their historical simulation, therefore, is far more accurate.

Does the game stick strictly to history? I don’t know. I remember, for example, when the Minnesota Twins’ Kirby Puckett became the first pro baseball player to be granted a contract extension that paid him in excess of $1.0 million a season. That happened in the 1980s. Does OOTP Baseball 11 allow you to start in 1921, for example, and not hand out a $1.0 million/season contract until Puckett breaks down that financial wall in the mid-1980s? I don’t know.

But just the fact that each year is accurate-to-history when you start it is, for me, more than enough to set Out of the Park Baseball 11′s historical simulation mode far and away above the competition.

About the only complaint I have that really sticks in my craw is that, although toned down a bit from OOTP Baseball 10, OOTP Baseball 11 still features an injury rate to big-name players that seems far and away more frequent than is encountered in real-life. While the code hasn’t taken out my top three batters and four of my five starting pitchers, as OOTPB 10 did, there have been stretches where I’ve had as many as four or five starters injured at the same time for stretches lasting from two weeks to five months.

While the shorter-term injury people cycle back in quicker, those who the game decides are injury-prone never seem to stay on-the-field for very long. So, although the injury rate, especially to major stars, has been improved in OOTPB 11 over last year’s version, I’m still not convinced it’s an accurate injury-rate model just yet.

I should also add that the interface has been updated mildly, and while it improves the readability of the text on-screen, the layout is still a bit complex and requires a somewhat steep learning curve. Once you get accustomed to the layout of the game, the interface becomes less of an issue, but it’s not a game the newbie is going to pick up and understand completely, intuitively, within the first 30 minutes. The learning curve is probably pretty steep for the first couple hours, then tapers off for another few hours before becoming comfortable and normal.

As I said last year, I don’t employ a star-system, a 10-point score or a letter-grade in my reviews. That makes reviewing a game of this caliber a dumbed-down experience that allows readers to skip over the body of the review to see the final “score” of a game. I’d rather readers of my blog read the full review, then decide for themselves if a game is worth their hard-earned sheckles or not.

I can’t imagine, however, any baseball fan not enjoying Out of the Park Baseball 11 much more often than the time they spend finding minor faults and complaints about it. Right now, there’s just no other PC baseball management sim on the marker that even comes close, and even the baseball games in the console world cannot match OOTP’s accuracy. Well done, Out of the Park Developments!

I’m finally getting deep enough into OOTP 11 to begin considering a review. I may be a slow reviewer, but at least I’m not a flippant one when I set my mind to it! Sure, some people would rather hear about Disney vacations than read what I think could be improved in a game’s inflation-adjustment system for historical sims, but hey… if you want surface reviews, there are plenty of places to find them.

You won’t get one here.

PureSim 2 is available for $19.95 from Wolverine’s Web store and currently is in Official Release version 2.59. Virtually no other information is known nor has any been made available at this time. However, I’m not sure I’d trade a Sony VAIO for any guarantee on a release date; the overhaul is expected to be significant, which means a fair amount of development time, I’d guess.