Review: Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings (Xbox One)

Hilarious. Hardcore. Hardball. Super Mega Baseball packs ultra-tight batting/pitching mechanics, a novel difficulty system dubbed “Ego”, and a deep baseball simulation with accurate physics and comprehensive statistics tracking

Pros:

• Big fat chunky cartoon graphics.
• How to play section.
• Tutorial and tips do pop up in game.
• Customise your team like renaming the team, each team player and their appearances.
• Baseball arcade game.
• Full online leaderboard support split between the game modes.
• Two game modes: Exhibition and season.
• 4 Player local co op play.
• CPU Vs CPU option.
• 12 teams to choose from.
• 6 ball parks to play in.
• Exhibition: Choose any team, EGO rating(Difficulty) ball park, skill boost rank and edit the line up.
• Fast loading times.
• Arcade atmosphere.
• Heavy metal influenced soundtrack.
• season: co-op option, pick team, pick division, and season lengths horticultural, medium and long.
• Player cards in team selection/lineup show stats, strengths and weaknesses.
• the batting, pitching and fielding itself is easy to pick up.
• Made up teams and players.
• Full stats section.
• 1000 Gamerscore.
• Has a morale system where successful actions in game improves your game where as missing coaches or getting struck out will decrease your skill and can cause nerves or fatigue to set in and destroy your stats.
• Season has a full calendar of games, edit line up and all current stats.
• Solid gameplay.
• Fielding has a fair amount of automatic placement.  Players will go towards the ball on their own and catch.  You can take over control, dive, climb the wall and jump for balls.
• batting is a cursor in a square box.  You can power swing with the right stick or holding X. You can also do a normal swing or bunt the ball. You can add more power by holding your control method down.  It works like bitching via a power bar style function.
• Bowling is the easiest of the 3.  change pitch type like fast spin or seam ball by using the right stick.  X button is faster than pressing and holding A. The longer you press it the more power you add. It goes on a power bar style where the longer you press the higher it goes until it resets.

Cons:

• A lot to take in.
• controls outside of the basics are actually quite confusing.
• Unofficial made up teams.
• Hard to enjoy as you struggle to take it all in.
• Cheap AI tactics.
• Takes ages to get good at batting and Fielding.
• Difficulty spikes.
• Some game features like EGO are not actually explained very well in game.

So it’s baseball. it does play the sport very well and like I say if you do the basic hit pitch and field then it’s very playable.  it’s just when you want to be good and want to win that you start getting frustrated.  I struggled to hit the ball properly,  I could not get my fielders to throw the ball properly.  bases loaded should be a good thing but managing each player is not an easy task. I want to like the game and I will continue to try and break down its many barriers but it won’t be easy. It has huge potential but without a practice area or a less in your face tutorial system it won’t be an easy task. Going up to bat to only be greeted with a crap load of information is not very sportsman’s like.! In short it ‘s a good solid little game but be prepared to suck at it for many hours until it clicks.  Then just maybe you will fully appreciate what the game has.