The re-birth of R.B.I. Baseball in 2014 was a fun throwback
to oldschool sports games. It wasn’t
great, but it was “oldschool” and it was expected that the series would get better,
so we put up with it. Three fully
mediocre games into this new R.B.I. Baseball experiment, however, and it isn’t
cute and fun anymore. R.B.I. Baseball
16 hasn’t improved at all over past games and our patience with the series is
wearing thin. See our full review for
more.
Game Details
- Publisher: MLBAM
- Developer: MLBAM
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Baseball
- Pros: Accessible gameplay; sim during season mode; stat tracking; modern fielding controls
- Cons: Gameplay isn’t improving; reused sound; no Home Run Derby
- MSRP: $20
To understand why RBI Baseball 16 is such a letdown, you
have to understand why the last two games were also sub-par. RBI 14 was seriously lacking in basic
features sports games should have – stat tracking, gameplay modes, etc. It played sort of okay, at least at the
time, though. RBI 15 added more modes
to fill it out to be more like a “real” game, but still didn’t have stat
tracking and the gameplay didn’t improve at all.
Enter RBI 16, and it is the same song, different verse. Features have actually been added like the
ability to simulate games during season mode and stat tracking, which make it
far and away a better game than the previous titles as far as features go, but
the gameplay still hasn’t changed at all.
What was sort of fun two years ago when the series returned just plain
sucks now. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to play any more of it. It isn’t fun. And I’m still pissed that we don’t have a simple Home Run Derby
after three games. Come on!
The lack of improvement in the gameplay is such a problem
because there have been a number of obvious easily identifiable issues with the
games from day 1. Pitchers run out of
stamina at the 5th inning every single game regardless of how many
pitches they’ve actually thrown.
Fielders constantly make errors.
The A.I. pitchers constantly hit batters. Infielders play extremely leaky defense and let way too many
grounders through. Pitchers and batters
still comically slide around with no animation when you move them. Fly balls don’t have any sort of landing
indicator, so trying to get into position to actually catch anything is almost
impossible (thankfully you can turn on assisted fielding which helps a
ton). The gameplay is bad not just
compared to modern baseball standards, but to classic baseball videogames as
well.
The developers have basically just been patching holes in a
leaky ship the last two years instead of actually fixing anything. The game is actually probably worth the $20
asking price as far as content goes, finally, but when the gameplay is so
mediocre it doesn’t matter how many features they add. For this series to survive past the next
entry, which I can only assume is coming next Spring, the gameplay desperately
needs some love.
The presentation is similarly disappointing. All 30 real world MLB stadiums were
re-created here, and they all look good.
Player models are still ugly and mostly indistinguishable from each
other (and look nothing like the real players) and the animation is still very
stilted and poor. It is also incredibly
disappointing to hear the exact same music, sound effects, and announcer as the
last two games. Literally, the exact
same sound three years in a row. Pay
someone to make a new song, please!
RBI Baseball 16 is undeniably a better game overall than the
last two games, but that doesn’t mean it is particularly good. The feature set keeps filling out and it is
almost a complete game this year, but the gameplay desperately needs work. The presentation also really needs touched
up as well. It is a shame these RBI
Baseball games are the only officially licensed MLB baseball games on Xbox One,
otherwise they’d be a lot easier to just ignore entirely. No.
Wait. They’re pretty easy to
ignore anyway.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.