I buy OOTP every couple of years to admire the progress even though I don't get as into it as many others do. This year's version I bought for myself as a reward for getting through a busy period of work during the real offseason. Before setting up the fictional league I like to immerse myself into, I played a 7-game series between the '93 Blue Jays and the '94 Expos, which will immediately tell you what country I am from. Not residing in the Greater Toronto area, I naturally took the Expos.
3-D playing fields are a real improvement and nearly make the text play-by-play unnecessary. All of the fonts work well even on the most text-rich screens. A few odd things I discovered during this first series of games:
--During roof-closed night games, the rendition of both Stade Olympique and SkyDome include backdrops with sunsets and skylines, which seemed odd for an indoor stadium... Even with the roof open you would not see this unless it was painted on the upper wall.
--It seems odd, if you let the 3-D play continue to the end of the inning, that the players will run into their dugout, but the animation will end there. If the user hasn't pressed a button to move forward in the simulation, why not have the other team run out onto the field, perhaps after a short wait, then wait for a user button push?
--A lot of plays at first base are close and could do with an umpire's signal. Often I found myself rereading the text to find out what happened.
--One more suggestion. Allow an option to remap the letter options to keys on a numeric keypad. Nothing quite like sitting back in an easy chair with a wireless numeric keypad and playing: until you want to try a run and hit and need the 'a' key...
That's all I've got so far. The result of the Canadian World Series? The Jays took a 3 games to 1 lead, Expos won the next two, and in Game 7 I was the goat, inserting a 22-year old Pedro Martinez in, on two days rest, to put the fire out in the 7th with a runner on second and none out, because he claimed to have something left in him. Three walks later the score was tied and Pedro was replaced. The next batter hit into a none-out DP that scored the final run of the series...
