Sony continues to get fans of America's favorite pastime ready for its upcoming virtual baseball simulation, MLB 13: The Show.
The game's publisher has posted a new video preview on its PlayStation Blog that showcases the new Beginners mode as well as hitting enhancements.
"We really want to make hitting more streamlined for players. Beginner mode allows people who have never played The Show - or have struggled with it - to learn the fundamentals of hitting," said Community Manager, SCEA San Diego Studios, Ramone Russell. "It's meant to teach you the basics of Plate Discipline, Pitch Recognition and Timing.
He added, "This mode uses adaptive A.I. that only advances as you do. If you take longer to get the hang of hitting in The Show, you won't be forced to advance. The A.I. will only advance once you've passed a certain threshold at each level."
In the blog entry, Russell explains how hitting has been enhanced for the new game including ball-bat interaction, which has been revamped so that once the ball is hit its path is decided by a several of factors.
"In regards to the Push/Pull hitting Trajectories Engine, MLB.com gives us spray chart data for all current MLB players, Russell said. "This data is then imported into a program, which tells us what type of hitter the player should be in game. All hitters in the game fall under one of five hitter types: Push, Pull, Balanced, Extreme Push or Extreme Pull. Both A.I. and human players will now hit more balls to their preferred side based on this attribute."
Players that are generated in game during franchise and road to the show modes are randomly given hitter types that will decide his tendencies. Russell says, "it's a weighted random number so you won't see a ton of guys in the draft from year-to-year who are labeled as extreme push hitters etc."
You can check out the video below to see all of the new adjustments and enhancements that are coming to MLB 13: The Show.