Super Mega Baseball 4 Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of Super Mega Baseball 4 (Xbox One)

Sunday, July 9, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

While there’s certainly an audience for simulation sports games, aiming to be as realistic representations as possible of our favorite sports, there’s also an market for sports games that also have more of a less serious arcade-like focus. Growing up, some of my favorite sports games were Mutant League Football, Base Wars, Punch-Out!!, Blades of Steel and NBA Jam, much more arcade focused on the fun element rather than recreating the sport exact as possible.

Having never played the Super Mega Baseball series before, I wasn’t sure quite what to expect other than a more light hearted experience given the colorful and cartoonish looking players and eccentric animations. With the series being around almost a decade now, Super Mega Baseball 4 is the latest that boasts a laundry list of additions and improvements, including over 200 fan favorite pros. Whether you’re a lifelong baseball or a completely casual watcher like myself (Go Blue Jays!), Super Mega Baseball 4 can scale to your skill quite easily depending on the experience you want from it.

If you want to simply jump in and play a game, Exhibition is what you’re looking for, simply choose the league, teams, and set any other parameters you’d like. You can also play Seasons if you want to try and get through to the finals. Want something a bit more involved, then Franchise mode is what you’re looking for. There’s an Elimination mode as well where you try and knock out other teams to see the last one standing. Lastly there’s Shuffle Draft, the most unique of the modes that I enjoyed more than I expected.

In Shuffle Draft you create a league from drafting players one by one, allowing to create some all-star teams and unique rosters. Think of a fantasy draft from complete scratch, but you’re not given the entire roster at once. You’re given eight or so options, each of which you can see their stats and ranks, even able to combine the pools of players from different league should you choose. As you fill your roster, if you’ve not chosen a specific role to be filled yet, you’ll see more cards of those each turn, eventually having to choose one. I’ll admit, I’m not great on my baseball knowledge for rosters and players, but this made it very simple for a casual fan like myself to create an awesome team in a fun way aside from boring menu diving.

Baseball fans will be glad to see over 200 former pro players and legends. Again, while I’m simply a casual fan, there were even a handful of names that I recognized, and it’s cool to see their played years as a pro on their player card. While I’m not going to list all of them, some of the more noteworthy were Willie Mays, Rollie Fingers, David Ortiz, Vladimir Guerrero, Jose Bautista and even the one and only Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth.

Players have individual traits, of which there are 55 new ones, so you can make your roster more in-depth than before. There’s 6 new stadiums, each of which is unique from one another, even one including the high walls that make for difficult home runs. With a total of 20 stadiums, this means every team in the Super Mega League finally have a home stadium to play in. There’s even a loyalty system included that will adjust based on how your players feel and if they want to stick with the team moving forward.

Not explained very well is the Ego system. For whatever reason, in my first Exhibition game I couldn’t hit the ball or pitch a strike to save my life, as the cursor was moving way too fast to aim properly. After a few games I was about to give up, wondering what I was missing and why I was doing so terribly. Somehow my Ego was set to 99, the hardest difficulty, where setting to 0 would be the easiest. Once I figured this out I turned down the Ego to a respectable 30 and was finally able to actually play properly.

Online multiplayer is not only included, but allows for cross platform play, though this can vary based on the mode. Online Leagues can be formed and played and there’s a ranking system that adjusts the Ego to how you play and are seeded after 4 Exhibition games. The only missing thing seems to be a Homerun Derby or something different outside of normal modes. The few games I played had no lag issues and there's a communication wheel with a few preset phrases to say to your opponent.

Players are very comical and characterized, like as if each of them was drawn by those street artists that embellish your features. While the pros are still recognizable if you know their faces, it’s certainly been cartooned to a heavy degree. Animations are quite varied and I saw a few different events that I wouldn’t have expected. Getting hit by a pitch for example, or smashing my bat when striking out, these added some variety to the presentation. There’s more body types, hair colors and more. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a badass mullet on a player.

While the audio has been revamped as well, you’ll hear plenty of chatter and ambient noise from the crowd. Players will grunt and show their displeasure when they strike out and the umpire will be quite animated in how he calls the strike outs. The lack of any serious play by play commentary does stick out at first, though there’s a soundtrack that plays in the background to avoid pure silence. Writing this I was trying to remember any of the songs from the soundtrack and I couldn’t, which speaks to how non memorable it was.

Admittedly a very casual baseball fan, I thought I was going to play a few games and basically have my fill, but I’m finding myself continuing to play a few games here and there due to being able to scale the Ego system to my liking. Super Mega Baseball 4 may not be quite for the hardcore baseball fan that desire a true simulation, but it’s great at making the sport accessible to all types of fans, even the casuals that want to hit a few Home Runs and enjoy a few quick games.

**Super Mega Baseball 4 was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 7.8 / 10
Gameplay: 8.5 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Super Mega Baseball 4 (Xbox One)

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