Finally, a Sports Game Built for Fun with Your Friends
Modern AAA sports games have been overrun by card-collecting modes. The explosive popularity (and profitability) of EA Sports FC's Ultimate Team has compelled most of the other major sports game franchises to imitate it — each EA title has its own Ultimate Team mode, the NBA 2K franchise has MyTeam, and MLB The Show has Diamond Dynasty.
Beyond the predatory microtransactions that are ever present in some of these games, these card-collecting modes can make it feel like the genre is running away from its roots: having fun playing virtual sports with your friends. Most of these modes try to awkwardly shoehorn in a way to play cooperatively in an attempt to overcome this, but only MLB The Show is able to deliver on an actually fun co-op experience.
Diamond Dynasty's Ranked Co-Op: A Balanced and Rewarding Experience
Diamond Dynasty's ranked co-op is simple yet effective. Before games, each player chooses three hitters, one starting pitcher, and two relievers from their individual Diamond Dynasty roster to add to a collective roster that both players build together. The game then fills in any remaining gaps from a consistent pool of players to build out a full roster of 26.
The gameplay side of things works on the basis of switching off who’s doing what. During odd innings, Player 1 pitches and catches while Player 2 fields, and during even innings, it's reversed. On offense, players switch off who's hitting with every at-bat, meaning that both players get the chance to hit with everyone on the roster more than once across nine innings.
It's a tremendously straightforward system, but also one that allows for a far more balanced share of gameplay than the co-op offered in any other sports game's card collection mode. There's no struggle over playing one person's lineup or another (in Madden and EA Sports College Football, one person brings the offense and another brings the defense).
The Sport Itself: Baseball's Easier to Make into a Co-Op Exercise
Baseball is just way easier to make into a co-op exercise. It consists of a series of one-on-one battles, which means you almost never have to rely on AI decisions in your games (unlike the 5-on-5 or 11-on-11 football games).
Having someone along with you on that journey goes a long way, because the easiest way to succeed is pattern recognition, and two pairs of eyes is better than one for that.
A Challenging but Rewarding Co-op Experience
On the pitching side, there's a similar kind of solitude that provides ample room for both heroics and disaster. There's no feeling in any co-op game quite like finding yourself struggling with runners on first and third base and no outs, and remembering that there's no way to tag yourself out of the action and nothing your teammate can do to help.
You got into this mess, and you've got to pitch yourself back out of it, too. Baseball is a team sport, but also a deeply isolated game. Somehow, MLB The Show's Diamond Dynasty co-op is able to evoke both of these seemingly at-odds facets of the sport, creating a challenging but rewarding co-op sports game experience in a time where there aren't all that many of those left.