After every game (or practice, for that matter), Power Pros will feed your performance into a formula and spit out updated rankings and abilities. Obviously, in order to do that, you need to build up your stats, and Power Pros tracks so many facets of performance that you'll likely never fully understand them all. Regardless of which path you choose, the end goal is still the same: play for 10 years in the hopes of making it into the Hall of Fame. MLB Life puts you through a similar experience, but you can choose to either play through as a created player or an already-existing MLB superstar. And remember, this is just one piece of the overall game. You can't possibly do everything in one trip, though, which is why the game allows you to create and save up to 200 (110 fielders, 90 pitchers) to take through this mode. All of these characters you run into have their own story lines and side-missions, and you quickly find yourself drawn into an experience that is part sports game, part RPG, and part Japanese dating sim. While there is a heavy focus on training hard and playing well, you have the option of wandering to the nearby town between games and meeting up with teammates or locals in a variety of settings.

Those would be Success and MLB Life, each of which balances baseball with lifestyle so well, that you may find yourself hurrying through your at-bats just to get back to handling all of your off-the-field dealings.įirst off is Success mode, which this year casts you as an aspiring AA player looking to outdo his rival and win the affections of the girl of your dreams. There are so many game modes that it's honestly impossible to talk about them all in one review without going on and on for pages at a time, so instead, we'll just focus on a couple of the game's more unique modes. You would be terribly mistaken though, as Power Pros is easily one of the deepest, most robust games out there for any genre, sports or otherwise. Therefore, it is forgivable if you look at the game's case, see these adorable characters and just assume this is a simple, stripped-down baseball game for kids. In less capable hands, this look would come across as lazy and unfinished, but Konami has been working this franchise for years (it's been around for decades in Japan) and they have honed the craft so well that you can easily pick out Derek Jeter or Ken Griffey Jr. This particular animation, known as chibi in Japan, transforms the Major League players you know and love into squat, cute little caricatures that sport almost no detail but still manage to convey both the appearance and personality of the players they represent. The first thing likely to strike you about Power Pros is its art direction, which can best be described as a cross between Rayman and Miis. Make no mistake, MLB Power Pros 2008 is a gem of a game, one any baseball fan should seriously consider tracking down. The result, though, is something truly great that manages to be one of the most comprehensive, stat-driven, obsessive, addictive and fun games out there, all while looking like something you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon show.

One such example is the Power Pros baseball series, which has eschewed the modern trend of realism and super-detailed player models for exceptional depth and gameplay aspects we would never expect to see in an American baseball game. There are certain Japanese game franchises on which we Americans really miss out.

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