MLB Power Pros Review: A great baseball sim for the Wii

MLB Power Pros looks cartoonish and mii-ish on the outside, but its backed up with a powerful gaming engine.

Coming from an avid sports fan and baseball stat geek, I purchased this looking for a realistic baseball sim...albeit it has cartoon-like players, which I don't mind. I can say that I have enjoyed this game and recommend it to other stat geeks and also to casual gamers. There are many ways to customize game play to suit your skill level and there are many different play modes...exhibition, full 162 game mlb season, home run derby and something called success mode where you create your own players in order to use them in your leagues and seasons. This is one of the most in-depth baseball sims I've seen. It will be liked by fans of baseball stars, as you "power-up" players throughout the season in "practice" between games.

As far as the gameplay is concerned it is fairly simple but fielding can be a tad frustrating at first...I found myself overrunning easy grounders both in the infield and outfield. There is an option to let the computer field the ball though, allowing you to take control after the player gets the ball. You don't use wiimote gestures, except for in the wiimote mode, which is something like an exhibition game...you use wiimote and nunchuck or classic controller in all other modes.

As far as realism goes, my biggest complaint is that the computer will almost never walk a batter, so being patient at the plate doesn't really pay off. Also, there is no way to "double-switch" which I found out when I was forced to use Gary Bennett to pitch the 9th inning in one of my season games. i.e, there is no way to switch fielding positions for players already in the lineup. The play-by-play announcer gets a little annoying after a while, but that is true of any sports video game, for the most part. Another thing is that there is no in-game box score when you go to the menus during a game. All of these are minor flaws in my opinion, but will be noticed by veteran baseball gamers.

Some of the cool things you can do is rearrange the divisions and even introduce new teams into the MLB season, so that you play with 32 teams. It will devise a 162 game schedule using the divisions you have set up, which I think is pretty neat. You can also have the computer simulate your season games for you if you don't feel like playing all of them...even after you have played a few innings. Or you can make it so that you take over whenever a certain player is batting. It can take the "grind" out of playing a whole season. You also have trades, drafts, and a AAA roster you can sub into and out of throughout the season.

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