'MLB The Show 17' review: Solid contact

Allow me to begin my review with a story: the story of Robots F. Dinosaurs, a young baseball player that got his start on the Pirates' AA affiliate Altoona Curve. Mr. Dinosaurs had an interesting name that the announcers could never quite get right – they ended up settling on calling him "Rabbit Dingus," since it was the closest they could get. Dinosaurs was a fan favorite for his entire baseball career, stepping up to the plate with his trademarked walk-up music, Utada Hikaru's "Simple and Clean" from the Kingdom Hearts soundtrack. And as he hit the first home run of his young baseball career during a home series against the Akron Rubberducks, the crowd roared as the Pokemon theme song blared over the speakers.

Baseball video games have always been fairly niche products, given the fact that fully enjoying them requires paying attention to the type of roster management that frankly isn't necessary in, say, Madden. Add in the fact that baseball video games must, necessarily, have different control schemes at different times to allow players to control the different phases of the game from fielding to pitching to base running to batting, and it starts to make sense why. Baseball games are different by nature, and they likely always will be.

That's why it's so impressive that "MLB The Show 17" does such a good job not just satisfying existing fans of the genre, but also in inviting newcomers into the game. The game takes time to teach you its intricacies, and there are tutorials for pretty much all of the game's mechanics – both new and old. Of particular import is the new meter-based pitching, an incredibly intuitive control mechanism that will look familiar to anybody who has ever played any kind of golf video game before.

There are four different ways to control both batting and pitching, and the game generally does an okay job of explaining all of them (with the exception of pure analog hitting – it took me ages to find out that you can put your bat on balls to the inside of outside by moving the right stick left or right) so that it's generally easy to jump in to the game.

Road to the Show will be familiar to anyone who has played last year's installment, with the exception of some minor changes. Of particular note is a smattering of new showtime mechanics – my favorite is the one that brings throw accuracy into play for fielders. Instead of simply pressing a button to fling the ball over to first for a routine out, you'll actually need to align a cursor over a target to ensure that your throw hits the mark. It's a small change, but it's a nice one nonetheless.