Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Baseball season started a couple of weeks back (Phillies are 7-3 up, thanks for asking) which has grabbed the attention of all the nations in the World Series. Fortunately I’m in one of them – a place called “The United American States” – where they show the sport on all walls and areas of sky. And so the baseball games are appearing too, including Baseball Mogul 2012 – a management sim that boasts it offers you far more detail than most. Don’t believe them? Then try the demo.

In other news, the word “mogul” is fun to say. Mogul mogul mogul.

2K Sports’ Major League Baseball 2K9 has a demo out this week, letting you play a three inning match between the Tampa Bay Rays and my beloved Phillies. Which was nice of them. Although maybe it’s a psychic demo, and it automatically picks your team when you download it. It’s literally impossible for me to say based on the evidence of my download, so let’s say, given the evidence, that there’s a 50% chance it’s psychic, and 50 that it’s a coincidence. That seems reasonable. Anyway, blimey, I enjoyed it.

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At first the end of January seems an odd time to release a baseball management game. With all the teams hibernating in their branded caves, and the beginning of the glorious new season not until April, people aren’t in a ballgame frame of mind. But Spring Training begins in about three weeks, and it’s right now that the managers are in their frenzied meetings and negotiations, performing the real-world version of swapping baseball cards with the other kids on the playground. (I hear the players with hologram faces are the most popular.) So it is that 2K Sports’ MLB Front Office Manager is out Monday. There’s the first of three trailers introducing the game below, along with ill-informed comment from the only person in England who could care less.

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