Out of the Park Baseball 24 is a wonderful blend of strategy, resource management and (if you want) creativity. While it may not be the deepest game ever, it certainly comes close with the accuracy of its simulation and mechanics. Not to mention just the sheer number of customization options you have. From the names and logos of each and every team in the league, to the faces and abilities of all the players; OOTP 24 lets your imagination run wild.
Out of the Park Baseball 24 is available for US$40 on Steam, Epic Games, the Mac App Store and the OOTP website.
Story | Right Off the Bat
There isn’t any overarching story in OOTP 24, or any of the previous titles for that matter. Luckily, there really isn’t any need for one. You’ll be able to get invested in your league just by watching the games play out and reading the news and various other messages in your inbox.
If you do want a story to play out, you’ll pretty naturally make something up in your head. Like when my 2-star pitcher, Mike Latta, hit his first ever home run to win an integral game. Sure, it was just luck that such a low ranking player ended up hitting a home run at the right time. But, to me, it felt like an exciting moment in the story of my team.
The winning team celebrates their victory at the end of the game.
Gameplay | You Gotta Be on the Ball
OOTP 24 has two gameplay modes. The first mode is simply called Out of the Park Baseball. The second mode, called Perfect Team, is a bit of a problem. I haven’t done a ton in Perfect Team, but it’s immediately evident that it’s pay-to-win.
Perfect Team, a Swing and a Miss
Collecting baseball cards is a huge hobby and it makes perfect sense to tie that into OOTP. Unfortunately, while many believe real world baseball cards are a worthwhile investment, I can hardly say the same here.
When you boot up the game, you can choose between the game’s two main modes.
A Fun Premise
Perfect Team is a pretty hands-off experience and I really do enjoy its concept. During the regular season, Monday through Saturday, games take place between 10AM ET and 1AM ET. Every 30 minutes, a game is simulated between you and another player in your bracket.
Each team is made up of players you’ve collected the cards of. Cards are collected from packs you purchase with Perfect Points, or PP, the in-game currency. You can earn points via achievements in Out of the Park Baseball mode in addition to how many runs you score in each Perfect Team game. Each pack costs 1,000 PP.
When you first start Perfect Team, it explains the rules to you.
Monetization
This would be super fun if it ended there. It doesn’t, though. PP can also be purchased with real-world money. For US$1, you can buy yourself 1,000 PP. Which, to some, may sound fine. Real baseball cards are around that price, after all. What you probably aren’t considering are the other factors. For example, there’s already a US$40 price of admission. Plus, new OOTP games come out yearly and that means starting over every year. All the money you spent on packs means nothing once the new game releases.
OOTP Baseball, Stepping up to the Plate
While Perfect Team may not be worth your time, the main mode certainly is. OOTP mode, which I’ll just call OOTP 24 from here on out, is wonderfully designed.
When creating a fictional league, you can choose the names and locations of as many teams as you want.
Tutorials
When starting up the game for the first time, you’ll be asked if you want to enable or disable tutorials. There is an additional online Help Index which you can visit via a button in the menu. As someone who has never really followed or known much about baseball, these are super helpful resources.
Customization
The reason I picked up my original copy of OOTP 22 was because of the amount of customization the game offered. And I am extremely pleased to say that OOTP 24 adds even more options. As mentioned before, you can customize team names, locations and logos. There are plenty of other options like multiple uniforms and the name of the owner. The owner’s customization options are very similar to the players’, minus the stats.
There are plenty of choices for players who want to customize each and every aspect of their team.
Speaking of the players, you can change their names, hometowns, appearances and stats; among other things. You could certainly go ahead and create every single player in the league if you wanted.
And, although I’m not that dedicated, I’ve certainly spent a lot of time customizing teams in OOTP games. In fact, I had to stop myself from going all-in on creating my teams in order to get this review out in a timely manner. I’ve easily spent upwards of 50 hours creating leagues in the past and I certainly see myself doing that in OOTP 24.
Managing Your Team
The real meat of the game, at least in terms of actual gameplay, is managing your team. You can customize this to be as much or as little as you’d like. In the past, I’ve usually taken a very laidback approach to management. Letting the AI do most of the work while I just watch everything, is my favorite way to play.
Under the Manager Options tab, you can choose who controls what aspects of your team.
This time I tried to broaden my horizons a bit. I experimented with letting the AI control various aspects of the game. Every in-game month or so I’d change things up to see how it felt. I still prefer my original way of playing, but I can confidently say that there’s something here for everyone.
Historical League Accuracy
Something heavily advertised with all OOTP games are their historic accuracy. Right on the steam page they mention how the game has “all historical MLB Seasons (1871-2022, including full historical minor leagues).”
When choosing a historical league, you’re given plenty of choices. You also get a short recap of the chosen season.
I’ve only really played in custom leagues, both in OOTP 24 and previous entries, but I did check out a historical league just to see how accurate it was. I checked out a few players and searched them up online to see how accurate things like ages and team placement were. Everything I checked was accurate, as far as someone who doesn’t follow baseball is aware.
Graphics & Sound | Take Me Out to the Ball Game
The graphics are a great step forward from the previous game. They still look a bit dated, however. The options to choose your camera angle at different parts of the action is nice. The return of the dynamic camera is appreciated as well.
The graphics, while certainly not the best, do the job well enough.
The UI looks very clean and is pretty intuitive. It’s pretty easy to find things, aside from the occasional struggle. It’s an incredible accomplishment that they took so many pages of information and made it relatively easy to navigate.
The biggest issue I encountered was when longer team names would run outside the boxes, but I wasn’t really bothered by it. The only other bug I encountered was: when taking a screenshot you’ll get two, with one having a dialogue box appearing over it.
As for the sound, there really isn’t a ton. Silence during the management portion is certainly no issue, though a bit more during games would be nice. I will say that the crowd sounds are a huge improvement over previous games. It feels more dynamic, although I can’t say for sure what exactly is different about it.
Conclusion | A Slam Dunk (I’m Out of Baseball Puns)
Overall, the Out of the Park Baseball mode of OOTP 24 is incredible. It does everything it sets out to extremely well and it’s so much fun. Perfect Team is, unfortunately, not really any better than previous years.
The inbox is a great way to learn about what’s going on in the world!
I think the best future for Perfect Team would be to either release it as a spin-off title or remove the monetization. Hey, they could even do both. Keep the monetization only in the mobile version, have separate leagues depending on how much money you’ve put into the game, or whatever. As long as this issue is fixed I think the next OOTP could be a 10/10.
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- Each Perfect Team pack comes with 6 cards.
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- The World Series can be pretty tough, depending on your opponents.
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- You’ll get a look at your team’s matchups at the beginning of each game.
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- You can have the AI play matches for you. Just sit back and enjoy the game!
Out of the Park Baseball 23 was reviewed on PC with key provided by OOTP Developments
Kristy
OOTP dev’s removed a bunch of the foreign ‘minor league’ teams and options, claiming that it was for legal reasons. A dig deeper by sleuths on their forums revealed that the dev’s just wanted to spend more time working on Perfect Team since that is where they think they can make a lot of money. It also is not a good thing that OOTP was bought out a year or so ago. Markus doesn’t really have the control he used to have over a game he created.