Pitching in MLB '08: The Show
I'm just going to post the basic instructions for pitching in MLB '08 here because the manual actually does not tell you how to pitch.
Anyway, it's simple. Choose a pitch. You can see its effectiveness by looking at the little blue bar under it. Now you'll get a pitch cursor. If you're throwing a breaking ball, there will be arrows pointing to where the ball will end up after it breaks. So spot a curve ball where the arrows are pointing, not at the baseball cursors itself.
Now, the pitching part. Cake. It's basically the old 3-click system.
First, you choose the pitch (by hitting the corresponding button), the cursor pops up, and you spot it. The cursor will fade, so do it quickly. Now it gets simple, even though the manual doesn't tell you. You hit X once to start the meter moving. You hit X again when it reaches the power level you want. If you want to throw a really smoking fastball, go into the red. The higher you go on power, though, the worse your accuracy will be.
For a breaking ball you might want to stop in the yellow area to get the break right, for instance.
Anyway, after you've clicked once to start the meter, then clicked again in the power range, a line will show up in the blue area of the pitching meter. That's your release point. Try to hit X again as soon as the pitch meter hits that spot on its way back down.
Hit it, and the pitch will be good (and the more you hit it the bigger the release point gets). Miss it and it'll go a little wild and the release point will get smaller. If you're really struggling, the release point will disappear and you'll see a light blue area which is approximately where you should release this pitch.
I hope this helps a few people out because, as I said, for some reason, this just ain't in the manual.
posted by Kip Lange @ 11:11 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I just got a PS3 and haven't played anything other than rock band with my kids, and we downloaded the show demo, and got very frustrated with pitching - now we can at least throw the ball over the plate. Got any tips for hitting?
No problem. The lack of instructions on pitching in the manual is unforgivable.
Yep, I can help you a little with hitting, although I'm still working on it myself. What you need to do to start hitting well is to guess the pitches. Hold down the R2 button, then use the L stick up, down, left, or right to spot where you think the pitch is coming. Next (you can skip this but you shouldn't), at the same time, hit the button corresponding to the pitch you think he's going to throw.
If you guess right on direction, you will see the area you selected flash red right before the pitcher releases. If you don't see the red, it means you guessed wrong. If you lock onto the correct pitch you guessed, but the wrong location, the whole outside of the strike zone will flash red, but not one of the directions.
If you guess *both* right -- and this is where you can really get a good hit or a home run -- the whole box will flash red, AND the location will flash red. That means you're locked in and you should most likely go for the pitch.
If you have a Dualshock 3 like me, you will also get a constant vibration if you guess right on both pitch and location. Unfortunately, the Dualshock 3 isn't released until April 15th in the U.S. (I bought mine for about $25 extra off of Amazon, from someone who was selling the Japanese controllers, which are the *exact* same model that you'll be able to buy in America on the 15th). The rumble REALLY helps in this game, and in all games, so I'd say definitely get the Dualshock 3 when it's released -- you won't be disappointed, it has an amazing battery life and still has Sixaxis built in if you like that.
Basically, what I do is guess pitch and location. Usually I sit on a fastball. If I guess the right pitch but the wrong direction, I'll try to push the left stick in the direction I think the pitch is coming (if I predicted a low fastball, and I lock in on the pitch, but don't get the direction, I move the cursor up a little and pray for a high fastball).
Hope this helps some. Hitting is hard in this game, which I think is a good thing (in MLB 2k8 it's way too easy to hit home runs, although they may have fixed this).
If this confuses you after you try it for a while, post another comment and I'll try to explain again.
Good luck, and happy I was able to help!
By the way -- guessing the pitches also helps you work the pitch count higher. Much fewer 3-pitch outs.
Oh, one last thing. If you swing and miss a pitch, on the next pitch, hit L3 quickly (click in the left analog stick). It will show you whether you were early, late, how your position was, etc., on the last pitch (you need to hold it down).
I believe that the release point is related to the confidence of your pitcher. It gets bigger as you start dominating in a game (pitcher gains confidence), but if you start getting roughed up on the mound (pitcher loses confidence), then it will get smaller or just disappear.
Just wanted to say that from my experience with the game, Toly is 100% right on the confidence factor.
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