For those that missed all of the whoopla, PC Gamer slammed OOTPB 2006 with a 47% score, while scoring Baseball Mogul and Puresim higher. Brett Todd wrote the review comparison and I have to regretfully agree with the score. Let me explain. Many review sites/magazines only take a look at the released product. As is. OOTPB 2006 was not a playable game on many different levels – online play was confusing (broken for some), solo play had very bad AI, and many things simply didn’t work or were coded badly. These are all things that a reviewer like Mr. Todd will jump on and he has consistently over the years been highly critical of games for exactly these same reasons. I actually applaud his objectivity since I know he is a big fan of the series.

Baseball Mogul seems to work and PureSim is more refined, so yes, they deserved higher scores. Heck, even OOTP 6.5 deserved a higher score than OOTPB 2006 based on release code.

On the other hand, reviews like the 9 out of 10 at Operation Sports are nonsense. I don’t think reviews should be based on game potential, but I am not sure if the OS reviewer actually played the game enough to judge that potential anyhow.

So don’t shoot the messenger. If you release a game with the long list of problems that OOTPB 2006 had, this is what you reap from objective reviewers. They will always score bug ridden games low.

Just be happy I don’t review anymore!

Share