MLB The Show 26

Genre: Sports (Baseball)

Players: 1-4 Team Competitive (Local), 2-8 Team Competitive (Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

It’s another year, so we’ve gotten another edition of Sony’s acclaimed Baseball series, and by this point the novelty of having a Sony game on Nintendo Switch has worn off, and given the iterative nature of yearly sports franchises, I’m back to copy-pasting last year’s review and changing pertinent details. As I’ve said in previous years’ reviews of these games, I’m not a huge baseball expert, and as such I’m not the best person to ask for in-depth analysis of stats or team management, nor of changes to the different gameplay modes here. What I’m mainly concerned with is the gameplay and the presentation – does this still look and play like a great Baseball game on Nintendo Switch.

All of last year’s game modes return again this year, including the Negro League mode I’m quite glad to see becoming a yearly staple of the series. I’m also happy to report that the core gameplay seems to be every bit as good as it always has been, providing players with a wealth of control options for every facet of the game, from pitching to hitting to baserunning to controlling your outfielders as a pop fly heads their way. Sony has always done a magnificent job giving players a wealth of options in this regard and making the experience as deep or as user-friendly as the player wants it to be, and this year is no exception to that.

The one big new feature this time around is the “Automated Ball-Strike” (ABS) system, which is an overly-complicated way of saying that now sometimes umpires make bad calls, and you have two chances every game to challenge their calls. I’m not a huge fan of this feature – I’m perfectly happy for videogame umpires to always be 100% accurate in their calls, but I suppose die-hard fans of the sport may see this as bringing the game even closer to a perfect simulation. Thankfully you can turn this off in options menus.

Finally, like last year, it is getting harder and harder to excuse just how ugly this game looks on Nintendo Switch. Low resolution with lots of aliasing, ugly player faces, some terrible looking textures in some places, and even some nasty slowdown at times, in addition to long loading times. Honestly, it’s shocking that this series hasn’t moved to Nintendo Switch 2 by now, or at least gotten a Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game.

If you only have a Nintendo Switch, MLB The Show 26 is still playable. More than playable – it’s a great Baseball game. But oof, it is not a pretty Baseball game, and if you have another platform to play it on, I recommend doing that instead.

tl;dr – MLB The Show 26 once again brings back Sony’s stellar Baseball series with great gameplay, but at this point it’s getting harder to overlook the ugly graphics, and it feels overdue for this series to pick up and move to the Nintendo Switch 2. If Nintendo Switch is your only platform to play games on, this will still give you a solid Baseball game, but it’s definitely not going to be one that’s great to look at.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

MLB The Show 26

Genre: Sports (Baseball)

Players: 1-4 Team Competitive (Local), 2-8 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Last year, I found MLB The Show 25 to get improvements to framerates and loading times on Nintendo Switch 2, but not much else. Is MLB The Show 26 going to have the same story, or will it fare better or worse? Let’s see…

Aaaaand… yeah, this is pretty much the same story. The biggest improvement is once again to the framerates, which are much smoother here than on Nintendo Switch, a very noticeable difference. Everything else looks pretty much the same.

And once again, there is a bump to the loading times as well – it took 1 minute 5 seconds to load to the main menu on Nintendo Switch, and another 25 seconds to load an exhibition game. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are cut down to 45 seconds and 9 seconds, a solid improvement.

Overall, this is once again a game that looks noticeably better on Nintendo Switch 2… but it still really needs its own Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. Still, if Nintendo is your platform of choice, this is still a decent way to play a fine baseball game.

tl;dr – MLB The Show 26 once again brings back Sony’s stellar Baseball series with great gameplay, but at this point it’s getting harder to overlook the ugly graphics, and even though the game is once again noticeably improved on Nintendo Switch 2, it feels overdue for this series to release a proper Nintendo Switch 2 version. If Nintendo platforms are your gaming platform of choice, this will still give you a solid Baseball game, but it’s still not even close to parity with non-Nintendo versions of the game.

Grade: A-

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