For those of you who may not know me, I love video games and I love baseball. Recently, the newest MLB The Show game on the PS4 was released. I have been playing MLB The Show since 2015 when I got my first PS4. Since I’ve played from MLB 15 all the way until MLB 20, I would say I’m very knowledgeable on the different aspects of each game. 

MLB The Show 20 came out around a month ago, and ever since then, I have been playing the game enough to provide an informative review and comparison to previous games.

The three main areas I will review are hitting, pitching, and fielding mechanics. With hitting, MLB 20 is far more realistic when it comes to being rewarded for good contact. In this year’s game, you actually have to square up a ball with good timing in order to be rewarded with a hit. Of course, sometimes cheap hits happen anyways, where you pull an outside slider over the third baseman’s head, but not as often. In last year’s game, for example, you could get a bunch of cheap hits that you didn’t deserve, but as soon as you got perfect timing and contact, you would lineout every time.

When it comes to pitching, it feels pretty much the same as MLB The Show 19 except for a few things. Changeups seem to hang right out over the middle of the plate, even when you set it up below the strike zone and get a perfect pitch release. Nevertheless, pitching seems pretty accurate other than changeups. 

For defense, the realism is most certainly there. You actually need solid fielders in order to have them make all the plays. Players with horrible fielding are making many more errors, which is the way it should be. Animations in the outfield can be kind of dumb at times, where your outfielder won’t lock onto the ball and will run right past it.

Overall, I would give this game a solid 8.5/10. Comparing it to last year’s MLB The Show game, I think it is slightly better. It has become a very interesting MLB game to play and helps me pass a lot of time during the quarantine. Anyone who is into baseball will definitely enjoy this game, and I highly recommend it.