Reviewing Out Of The Park Baseball 13

Not too long ago I came across an opportunity to play Out of The Park Baseball 13, OOTP developments’ latest installment of their renown baseball sims. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, hardly even knowing what the game was a bout. I had heard of the game before… but I really didn’t know what it was all about.

I have played my fair share of baseball games, and I’ve been in a respectable amount of fantasy baseball leagues as well. If you’re going to pick up a copy of OOTP13 you should expect sort of a combination of the two, but a much much deeper experience.

OOTP13 isn’t like the 2k and MLB The Show console games, where you can play an exhibition, start your own career, or start your own team and play with them. In fact you don’t even “play” at all. That’s where the fantasy league side of things comes in.

Essentially in OOTP13 you are the General Manager of whatever team you want to be. The Braves, Yankees, Mariners, and even the Bad News Bears. That’s right, this game let’s you become the General Manager of the Bad News Bears. Talk about awesome.

Well the first thing I did when getting into the game was choose to take over the Atlanta Braves for Frank Wren. Of course I’m going to run the Atlanta Braves, you already knew that. But did you know that I would then go on a trading frenzy? Of course you did.

The joy of this game is that I could make the team exactly how I wanted the actual team to be like in real life this season, with my first move being a 5-man trade to get Adam Jones from the Baltimore Orioles. I traded away everyone’s favorite Jair Jurrjens, Juan Francisco, and Kyle Kubitza for Adam Jones and L.J. Hoes. Needles to say I was excited.

What followed after that really isn’t even worth mentioning in too much detail, there are just so many moves you can (and probably should) make including trades, call ups and send downs, free agent pick ups, DL assignments, and even waiving and DFAing players if need be. The system used in the game is incredibly realistic and you have to think about pretty much everything to make a successful squad including budget.

I love having a budget restriction when I have my own team because it creates a more realistic sim and a bigger challenge. Don’t worry if you don’t like to be held back however as you pretty much have the freedom to tweak the system however you like. Don’t want a cap on your money? Done. Don’t like the way the divisions are set up in the league? Change them. You don’t even want to play with MLB? Go ahead and start playing in an asian league or better yet, create your own fictional or historical league?

This is really where OOTP13 gets exciting, the ability to do whatever you want and still have an extremely advanced baseball sim to do it with. Personally I like to use the current major league rosters, but given what I have heard from people commenting on the game the fictional and historical leagues are extremely addicting.

One feature that I haven’t been able to try out yet is the online mode. It sounds like it is just like fantasy baseball, but with the benefit of using the advanced management system you get with OOTP13. Just like your own league, you can customize this however you like to suit your preferences as well as your friends.

If you are into fantasy baseball, baseball sims, or just think this game sounds exciting you really need to check out Out of the Park’s website and learn some more about it. The cost is $39.99 but I can honestly say I would get it even if it was 60 bucks, like most console games. It is simply much better and much more in-depth than they could ever hope to be.