Sadly, all good things must come to an end. My preview time with Out of the Park Baseball 2007 will end while I’m at work and it’s locked down until the game release on the 23rd. The good news is that everything I looked at is pretty stable and nothing went wrong during any sim I ran. The bad news is that I only got to scratch the surface of this very good game.
I just want to mention the wonderful reports that are available because this is what makes OOTPB 2007 a must buy as far as I am concerned. The minor league system report is back to what it should be – a replicate of the OOTPB 6.5 minor league report. It now tells you whether or not a player should be kept at the current level or moved. This is something those of us struggling with OOTPB 2006 will really appreciate having back.
The star system returns but I honestly didn’t mind it being gone. I found using statistical performance a much better indicator in OOTPB 2006. But some folks wanted them back and Markus listened.
The new reports are the icing on the cake. The positional strength overview report is HUGE, simply HUGE. Here your players are ranked against the league at the position and (more importantly) your best prospect for each position’s rank is listed. I can’t express how happy I am to see this in the game.
The development report returns, but I didn’t get a chance to see if it was improved over the dismal previous development reports, even those in OOTPB 6.5. There are plenty of mod makers for 6.5 and at least one for 2006 that made what owners need in their development reports. We need to see talent increases AND up ticks or down ticks in the ratings.
Some people continue to moan and groan about the interface. They’re idiots, pardon my French. Yes the interface is different than OOTPB 6.5. However, it is much improved over OOTPB 2006. And if this interface is keeping you from playing OOTPB 2007 with all its baseball gaming goodness then you simply are not a GM baseball text gaming fan. Sorry to be so blunt, but no baseball gaming product of any kind comes close to what OOTPB 2007 can do.
We’ll get to see if everything works as advertised on March 23rd.
