The follow up to the wildly successful PS3/PS4 title “Super Mega Baseball”, finally makes it’s way to Xbox One and PC in Super Mega Extra Innings. Developer MetalHead has managed to keep the gameplay we love intact while adding new content and improvements. I’ve played many simulation baseball games over the years and I was surprised with how realistic Extra Innings played and felt, despite the over the top characters and animations. I even caught myself fist pumping after I stuck out a batter because I was that into the game.
You can play an exhibition game or take your favorite team through a season where you get what you expect from any season mode standings, stat tracking and playoff chases. In exhibition mode, you get to choose from 6 unique looking stadium designs and 12 different teams that excel at different aspects of baseball. You can also customize the players on those teams from their name, hair or jersey number.
The controls are very easy to learn and if you have played a baseball game before you should know a good portion of what each button should typically do. Hitting the ball takes times to get use to. They give you the option to swing for contact or power, and your success depends on which type of swing you choose and how well you timed it. BEWARE THOUGH, the higher you raise the difficulty, the less computer assistance you get. The fielding felt very smooth for the most part, as I was turning double plays like a vet in no time. Although, sometimes the diving mechanics wouldn’t cooperate with how you think they should react on certain ground balls. The strength of the game by a long shot was the pitching. You select a pitch and the success of the pitch depends on how close you get the moving cursor inside the stationary one. The game gives you every pitch known to man to throw and when you throw it the ball will actually break how it would in real life and had realistic contact with the bat depending on where I threw it. So you can have intense battles with your friends at the plate, and that moment was when I knew this game was legit!
While it is a disappointing you cannot take the game online, Super Mega Baseball Extra Innings finds the perfect blend of realism and arcade style to appeal to a wide range of people. If you need a baseball fix like us XBOX users or just like baseball in general I would highly recommend this game for you.