MLB 13: The Show (Vita) review

  • Breaking
  • 31/03/2013

The MLB: The Show series long ago established itself as a terrific baseball simulation on the PlayStation 3, but games with such a high standard often struggle when their polish is removed for a portable game.

Not so with The Show 13 on the PS Vita.

SCE take out the polish of its big brother but manage to keep the majority of the gameplay intact.

All the modes from the PS3 version are here, and one surprising feature is cross-platform playability.

Put simply, you can upload your PS3 save file for your association or Road to the Show to the PS3 cloud, download it on your Vita and continue playing while you're on holiday or what have you, then upload it to the cloud and continue on your PS3 again.

It's these kinds of innovations which give the Vita an edge over if SCE had just created an iPhone app.

The downside is you would have to purchase both the PS3 version and Vita version - and I'm not sure if any Kiwi is that baseball crazy.

Gameplay-wise The Show 13 is solid. All the performance of its big brother is here, though the Vita's interface can make it very difficult to aim pitches or line up your plate coverage.

The touch-screen capabilities of the Vita offer a few unique chances for this game but were not explored much at all.

Graphically it is unimpressive - think a low-end PS2 game - with players popping up out of nowhere or clipping with one another, but that is a small price to pay for a game which performs all of its key tasks very solidly.

Four stars.

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     MLB 13: The Show  
:: Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
:: Developer: SCE San Diego Studio
:: Format: PlayStation Vita
:: Rating: G

source: newshub archive