Basic baseball game that is fun to play.

One of the greatest arcade baseball games I've played. It's like Backyard Baseball but much more difficult and in depth, and it has a ton of replayability due to its varying skill levels and high skill ceiling in general. One downside is there's no online multiplayer, though the devs have said they want to make it but are limited due to their small team. If you're looking for realism, probably not your game but generally its a fantastic game.

I love this game. I have just lost my mom and mother in-law and my old faithful dog within 3 month period and the only thing that keeps me sane is Super Mega Baseball. The game stands true to every aspect of the real game. The way you can customize is absolutely a laugh a minute. I have put in over 200 hrs. Playing and I don’t look at stopping anytime soon. Great fun and recommended to all ages.

TL;DR: You can tell that every ♥♥♥♥ing part of the game is made with a love of baseball

I have been wanting a baseball game on PC for years, and it's no secret to PC gamers who are also huge baseball lovers that there is a huge lack of games for us. Sure, we have OOTP Baseball, but it's not a baseball game. I love it as much as the next sabermetric fan, but I wanted a game to actually play baseball. And then we had RBI Baseball, which was a letdown. So naturally, I was excited when Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings was announced. And now that it's finally here, it feels like after years of being deprived of a good baseball game has finally come to an end.

Now, I only really have three complaints about the game, but they're sort of not even complaints at all. More like a couple of things I want added to the game in future updates.

Let's get those CONS out of the way first:

- Lack of sabermetric stats

Baseball fans LOVE stats. We love OPS, WHIP, AVG, and ERA, and I'm glad those ones are in the game, but over the years, baseball has evolved to embrace much more in depth stats. I want to know the WAR, BB/K, ISOP, BB/PA, RC27, and G/F of my players.

- Lack of customizing options

I want some of those Chris Archer stirrups. I want my player to look like that 20-something Jaden Smith-looking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. My nasty slider needs the player look to match.

- Lack of online multiplayer

I want to have my Harry Butts dominate another man's bat. I mean, he has a 1.45 ERA, 11.4 K/9, and .122 OPP AVG. Let me show him off.

And now we get to the PROS list:

-The game is beautiful

The player models are clean and fun. the graphics are vibrant. And the stadiums. Oh the stadiums are gorgeous.

- The gameplay is fun

IT'S BASEBALL. IT'S INSANELY FUN.

- There are no special pitches or swings

Take notes, Backyard Sports. Nobody likes to play against a pitcher who makes the ball corkscrew while it digs underground and pop up only to burst into flames and then into the batter's ♥♥♥. Super Mega Baseball is cartoony, but it's never cartoony in an unfair way.

- Ego difficulty slider

I love this. You don't have an option of easy, medium, and hard difficulties to play on. You have an actual slider that sets the difficulty in small amounts.

- The names of the players

You know the names you think of when you think of baseball? Babe Ruth, Clayton Kershaw, Sandy Koufax, Wade Boggs, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle, Rollie Fingers, Gaylord Perry etc. They're baseball names. Their parents looked at them and thought, "Bob doesn't sound like a name for a future Hall of Fame catcher. Let's name him Buster." Well, in this game EVERY player has a baseball-sounding name. It's awesome.

-It's a game

-It's a baseball game

-It's a baseball game on PC

-It's a fantastic baseball game on PC

WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS REVIEW. BUY THE ♥♥♥♥ING GAME.

9 out of 10

It's like Backyard Baseball all grown up!

Slightly more involved than simply picking Pablo and dominating.

Do you want a realistic, fully-featured, MLB-licensed game? Go play The Show. Do you want a super-detailed simulation of life in the front office? Play Out of the Park Baseball. Do you want a damn fine arcade-style baseball game that's easy to pick up but difficult to master, has insanely fun pitching mechancis, and a fine-tuned difficulty setting to ensure the AI is always giving you a good fight? Play this.

TL;DR - I've been having a lot of fun with this game. But it's not an MLB Simulator.

Pros:

- Fun baseball game. It has all the essentials to make it fun, including smart controls.
- Organic, real feeling physics. There is no "cheat spot", you have to adjust your timing for every swing, and getting a tater feels like an accomplishment.
- Original difficulty system. Make your games as easy or difficult as you want, very precisely.

Cons:
- No in-game save. Once a season game starts, you need to finish it or it will be recorded as a loss.
- Some stats are weird, like, since there are no errors recorded, if you hit a grounder to first and the 1B flubs it... it's still a base hit. I understand why they do it this way, it just feels wrong to get a hit that way though.

Bottom line, it's a baseball game in PC, and it's fun. Stick with OOTP for realism, and grab this to blast that hanging slider over the left field fence!

Only played a little but I wanted to get this out there for people with concerns. I was deeply worried about the controls as I prefer to use a mouse and keyboard. In my first little game where I hopped in I had found the controls to be quite pleasant and I felt I was doing well right out of the gate for only my first game. So in case anyone is worried I found 0 issues with keyboard and mouse controls.

As far as the game....its fun. Has a real nice atmosphere. Im glad I bought it and Im glad devs are making games like this.

Definitely worth the money in my book.

A great sports game for PC, which seems to be somewhat of a rare thing. There is no MLB license but what you have are great looking stadiums, lots of stats, and excellent gameplay. The graphics in general are very good and the cartoonish style and names of the players give them character. Hitting and pitching is what the game is all about and its very fun...fielding is there but not as in depth. You can train your players, manage your team during a long season, and compete for leaderboard scores. One of the best features is the Ego system which is a difficulty setting (from 1 to 100) that increases your points the higher level you play at. I play at 50 right now after starting out lower...50 is where it starts to get difficult and I have close games...mostly losses but the system encourages you to get better slowly which is nice.

10/10 would KO a batter again!

This game is one of the most surprising titles I have ever picked up on Steam.
I got it under the assumption that this would probably be a super simplified game with the bare minimums by how it looked and hoped for the best...

What I ended up buying was not only an amazingly fun and addictive baseball game, but a game with one heck of a lot more depth to it than you would assume by judging this game by it's cover.

=== Gird your loins ye who read the full review below ===




The batting in this game, completely on point. The physics feel super tight and even in higher difficulties you don't feel like you're getting cheesed when you ground out or pop the ball a mile high. If you swing on that pitch down in the strike zone and haven't reacted quick enough you know damn well you're going to ground out. Everything feels very organic and proper as far as how the ball reacts. There are two different types of swings (plus bunting) : power and contact. You are also able to check your swing with both styles.
For the most part the same can be said about the AI as far as their hitting goes; If you make your pitches and place them well you will get your outs and K's. Again, feels very realistic despite it's cartoony graphics and light-hearted attitude.

The pitching, my favorite part. You have a plethora of pitches (8) to choose from, which is way more than enough considering every pitcher has the same choices. The pitches available are: 4 seam fastball (so-called Meatball), Cut fastball, 2 seam fastball, Slider, Screwball, Curveball, Changeup and a Forkball which is like a split finger fastball or Sinker as far as the movement goes. You perform the pitch by first aiming for the spot you wish the ball to begin it's trajectory and then following the break of the ball. You attempt to come as close to the break point marker (which appears after you start your windup) with your aim marker. The closer to that spot you get the higher quality a pitch you perform. As with batting you have two different pitching styles available to you. Normal pitching and Power pitching. It is a very well done and fun system which I find more interesting than the common methods found in other baseball games like power sliders and such.
As much as I appreciate and love the pitching in this game, I also feel it is an area of the game that has a lot of potential to be made better. Not so with how you perform your pitches but that each pitcher should have their own set of pitches. Along with that system it would more easily open the doors to having upgradeable pitches for each of the pitchers as well.

If you're familiar with baseball games and the game of baseball itself there is not much to go over with baserunning and fielding so I will not say much here.
The fielding feels good but I can see people getting a little frustrated with how quickly (or slowly in this case) your fielders will move. It feels very laborious at first but it is something you get used to and everyone's on the same playing field in that regard for the most part. You can make awesome diving plays if you time it correctly as well as jump walls to reel in those homers you'd all but given up on.
The baserunning, less to say here than the fielding. Pretty much your basic baseball game here except you cannot be picked off on base by the pitcher. The game uses an adaptive method, if it notices you are stealing a lot of bases it will start to give your runners less and less of a lead off. That is one point of the game where it is lacking and unfortunately simplistic.

The depth.

Yes, depth! In case you haven't been convinced so far that there is more to this game than meets the eye, hopefully this will make it a bit more evident.

As you play the game with your team in season mode you will be able to hire staff to help your team on their way. Each member of staff you hire will have 3 modifiers to offer your players in four different categories. Gear vendors, Trainers, Coaches and Stylists. Your players will start out with a few slots open and available to have modifiers placed in and their stats will improve according to the type of modifier you set. Each player can have up to a maximum of 7 slots for different types of modifiers that will be made available as you play through your seasons. Any extra slots and bonus modifications you have done will persist from season to season with that team and you will eventually be able to make your players superstars, for lack of a better term.
There is a bit of strategy behind this feature and you will also see the opposing teams players' improving in the same way as well. In some cases even quicker than your own players if you did not approach the proper staff or applied your modifiers poorly. For this part of the game I would recommend looking at SMB websites forums for a more in-depth description of the system itself just for a better understanding.

There is also a decent amount of statistics in the game including (but not limited to ;) ) BABIP, AB/HR ratios, walk and XBH percentages, OPS/OBP/Slugging, Total Bases, etc. And if by chance you don't know what any of these actually mean it is described in game.

One more thing that adds to the depth of this game is the highly adjustable and customizable difficulty system, called "Ego".
You can adjust the difficulty across the board, or you can go into what's called Ego mode and adjust the difficulty based on the positions you're playing. For example, you could have batting and pitching at 50 Ego, but fielding and baserunning at 80 Ego so the game doesn't hold your hand as much for those bits. It makes it very easy to find a difficulty which you feel comfortable playing at and that gives you a good run for your money sometimes. The difficulty goes all the way from 1 Ego, through to 99 Ego. Anything above 60-70 Ego (once you've gotten comfortable with how the pitches look and move) will give people who are familiar with baseball games a good challenge while at the same time feeling like it's a proper competition.

An unfortunate truth that has been a big disappointment to many about this game is that there is no online multiplayer, nor is there plans for there to be in this game. With any luck this game will have a sequel, which, from what I hear and have understood, online multiplayer will be one of the priorities for that as it has (quite understandably) been one of the most requested things by the community.
If by chance you happen to have friends within couch distance the game does have one of the most fun co-op playstyles I have seen for local multiplayer and a baseball game in general.


If you have stuck around to this sentence and read through the whole review I have written up, I commend you, and hope that this has given you a good idea to make a well informed decision. This game and the team behind it truly deserve all the support they can get for this game. It has amazing gameplay somewhat hidden behind it's cartoony facade.

Thanks for reading. :)