Out Of The Park Baseball 20 slides home
Take me out to the ball game
I made a few vows in remembrance of our former Adam (RPS in peace): I will try to understand grand strategy games; I will sneak one single ciggy after the company AGM; I will post about the release of new baseball games. Such as Out Of The Park Baseball 20, the latest in the management sim series I know Adam had a soft spot for, which launched today. Oh Adam. I could almost swear I saw Adam playing a baseball game on ye olde RPS Steam account the other night. The mind sees what it wants to see.
Out Of The Park is a baseball management sim in the way that Football Manager is a football management sim: an abstraction of several different jobs largely revolving around data and statistics. Oh, but how you can make that data come to life! I did always enjoy hearing Adam's stories about the weird leagues and goals he'd set. Here's one of his three from OOTP 16.
"My fictional league is the British Baseball League. It begins with two subdivisions, each containing four teams. They're split between North and South, and I'm taking charge of the Manchester Monsoon. The start date is 2015 when an unknown benefactor has decided to fund the construction of ballparks in eight major cities, and has spurred on the creation of a major, televised British league. OOTP can simulate rule changes, drafts and, most excitingly for my fictional league, expansions. That means there's the possibility that by 2035 we'll have sixteen or twenty four teams across Britain as the sport takes hold."
Aces.
As with other sports management games, 2019's game brings updated data and improved features. These include MLB data updates coming across the current season reflecting all the results and changes, AI improvements, new motion-captured animations for the 3D view of games, honed data of historical games, and real-world German, French, Spanish and Czech leagues with their real teams and players.
Out Of The Park Baseball 20 is out now, priced at £31/€37/$40. You can get it from Steam, Origin, and the devs' own store. That and Steam, but not Origin, offer a 10% launch discount right now.
