If you like sports managers but soccer is not exactly your thing (or you don't approve of how Sports Interactive treats its fans) you may want to try Out of the Park Baseball 18. In my opinion it can compete with Football Manager in many ways and the devs actually improve the game every year. Not to mention that the previous version, OOTP17 was the Metacritic Game of the Year for PC.
There are several things I love about this game:
- The game is very detailed with a lot of statistics that really mean something
- The ability to play every year of baseball from 1871 to the present day and beyond, with all the historical players (even those that never made it to the majors and dozens of minor leagues, all with their players), and the rules are changing accurately too. What's more, the game takes the number of all the doubles, triples, home runs, balks, balls, strikeouts etc. from each year and modifies their number each year to account for the different eras - in the dead-ball era you won't get that many homers because the ball is primitive, different tactics are used and ballparks are huge (each ballpark is different in its size and that can mean more or less home runs, triples etc. too).
- Team chemistry with different types of players - some may be good leaders, some work as sparkplugs, some are outspoken or disruptive. You might think twice before signing a good but disruptive and slothful player.
- Pretty good facegen, IMHO better than the one in Football Manager.
- Everything's moddable and there is no DLC editor, actually no DLCs or paid content at all. You can modify every single things, create your own leagues, or even whole worlds. You can even create a Game of Thrones league if you want.
- You can skip all the strikes/balls/fouls and simply see the end result if you want (personally I never use it).
- There are a lot of mods online including facegen for almost every player in Baseball history, all of the ballparks as they were in different years, or fictional leagues.
- 3D mode which is not top-notch and worse than in FM but is alright.
- Three modes to play - General Manager (buying and selling players, hiring and firing employees, financial stuff like budget adjusting, but also managing lineups if you want, influencing strategy), manager (essentially giving orders what your players should do on the field), or playing both as GM/Manager combining responsibilities.
- Owner goals with many different types of personality - some will prefer money and some will prefer winning, some will be very controlling and others will leave you alone, and their patience will vary greatly too.
- Commissioner mode that allows you to control pretty much everything that happens in the game.
- Steroids that can lead to your best players being suspended.
What I don't like then? Probably that the devs don't have the license for things like ballparks and you need to download them yourself and the quality varies. Some facegen players are wrong too, but only in case of minor leaguers so far. Overall it's a very solid sports manager and certainly one of the best on the market.
https://www.ootpdevelopments.com/out-of-the-park-baseball-home/
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Topic: Out of the Park Baseball (Read 2171 times)