With baseball season underway, it’s time for the baseball games to start hitting the field, and Com2us has another yearly installment of their long-running series, 9 Innings Baseball 18 (Free), out now. The game got an update from last year’s version in the same app, so if you played last year and deleted, you might already have the app in your library. The game features a few interesting features in this year’s updated. They’re including a one-handed Arcade mode, albeit still in landscape, but that should make this easier to play while commuting or doing other things. Like, if you’re at a baseball game, your team’s down by 10 runs, and you have a drink in one hand, game in the other, waiting until you can actually leave. Check out the exclusive trailer for the game, starring Mike Trout:
The arcade is built around 60-second sessions. You’ll compete for high scores against other players, using a variety of different batters against certain pitcher setups. Some historical players are available, such as 2004 Adrian Beltre during his breakout year. Comboing together hits and scoring home runs are key to success in this mode. You can still play standard games, including managing your own team, collecting current and past players to build the ultimate franchise.
The Live Player System is back, which will update players’ rankings based on their performance throughout the season. So, if a rookie player does well, the game will reflect their performance. It’s much better than playing a game that releases before the season starts, and their stats are far below their real-world performance. And it’s funny when a prospect has great rankings at the start of the season, but winds up being terrible in real life. Not in this game!
It’ll be interesting to see how the rankings fluctuate for Shohei Ohtani, in particular: as not only a Japanese player where we don’t know how the performance will carry over this season from NPB to MLB, he also is trying to be a successful batter and pitcher. His rankings could make him extremely valuable if he manages to do well in both roles! He also represents a challenge when it comes to player and roster management for baseball games! Also, while Mike Trout is essentially the LeBron James of baseball, how will Shohei Ohtani’s popularity impact his through the years? Will Ohtani become the globally-recognized star that Trout should be? Or will Ohtani’s international popularity raise Trout’s profile? We’ll find out!
MLB 9 Innings 18 is out now worldwide on iOS and Google Play for Android. I can see myself sinking some time into the arcade mode in particular: it’s a great way to get some items, warm up your swings, and get acclimated to hitting.
