MLB Front Office Manager
From Take 2

Take yourself in to the ballgame! MLB Front Office Manager lets gamers do everything a real-life baseball GM can do to develop a team from Spring Training through a full MLB season, into the playoffs and the World Series. Using Major League teams and players, gamers will create their own fictional baseball universe and build their reputation into elite status. Gamers can replace aging veterans with rookies, scout the Minor Leagues, make blockbuster trades, and even participate in bidding wars for posted players from Japan as they make their way to the Hall of Fame.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8474 in Video Games
• Brand: 2K Sports
• Model: 710425315190
• Released on: 2009-01-26
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM

MLB Front Office Manager gives fans the chance to experience their dream job as a Big League General Manager. Make trades, sign free agents, draft prospects and manage games all the way from Spring Training through the Playoffs. Featuring deep gameplay modes and a unique presentation style, MLB Front Office Manager is the only MLB licensed game to give fans total control of an MLB franchise.

Using Major League teams and players, you will be able to create your own fictional baseball universe and build a reputation into elite status. You can replace aging veterans with rookies, scout the Minor Leagues, make blockbuster trades, and even participate in bidding wars for posted players from Japan as they make their way to the Hall of Fame.

MLB Front Office Manager offers two distinct game modes. Become the GM in Career Mode, and manage a team through a 30-year career that will hopefully lead to the Hall of Fame. As your knowledge and skill progresses over time, you will gain points to improve various areas and help the team win games as a result. With Online Fantasy Mode, create an online head-to-head management experience. With up to 30 Managers in the league, you can compete against friends to see who has what it takes to be the best.

Special features include:

• Build Your Roster - An extremely deep Career Mode takes fans beyond simple trades and free signings, and allows them to fully experience the life of an MLB general manager. Manage Minor League rosters, set scouting budgets, bid for Japanese free agents, select new players in the Amateur and Rule 5 Drafts, and more.
  
• Take The Field - Manage your team’s games on the field all season long and enjoy a never-before-seen presentation style designed to resemble a real life TV broadcast.
  
• Learn From a Pro - Renowned GM Billy Beane becomes a mentor to users, providing helpful tips and insightful baseball information that even the biggest fan doesn’t know.
  
• Online Fantasy Leagues - Customize your league with fantasy drafts, modified rules and traditional Rotisserie and Head-to-Head fantasy baseball scoring systems. Also available offline against the CPU.
  
• Innovative Baseball Statistics - Evaluate talent using in-depth and authentic player statistics, as used by Billy Beane.

If this is the life of a GM, count me out
When I first heard about MLB Front Office Manager I was very excited. I've always enjoyed the management aspect of sports games and usually spend much more time managing and toying with the rosters than I do "playing" the sport itself. Enter MLB FOM. My sports prayers have been answered, right?

Not really. I've played through one season, and I can't even bring myself to get through my second offseason as a GM (I'll explain below). So with out further ado, lets get down to the good, the bad and the OMG what where they thinking?

The Good:

The interface is clean and the options are incredibly realistic. It runs pretty smooth. Anything you could want management wise in sports game. Not only can you offer arbitration, participate in the Rule 5 draft, and scout the world for talent, but you can also offer incentives, control your 40 man roster, and run every imaginable aspect of a baseball front office. You get frequent email updates informing you of various things around the league, but these quickly become a nuisance.


The Bad:

Where to start? The music is bad but that doesn't really matter. Trades are horrible. Its nearly impossible to trade for anyone, even when they are on the trade block, unless you grossly overpay in talent. What's mind bending is that when the AI makes trades, they seem to be almost laughable, but when a real player gets involved, the gloves come off. There is no way to gauge a players interest in resigning, an by the time you know they aren't interested in your bid, they have signed with someone else. The menus are tedious and you can't sort by things that really matter, like overall talent rating, the ability to hit for power or average, etc, on most screens. In fact, the only way to find out a players skill ratings is to go player by player and look at their info on a separate screen. This makes scouting for hidden talent in other teams farm systems incredibly time consuming and not enjoyable. The fact that the players don't seem to evolve during the season regardless of how good or bad the play throughout the year. The only times I have seen ratings change is when the calender goes from Dec 31 to Jan 1. The big problem with this is that you can vastly overpay for players when you resign them or nab them on the free market. I resigned a 2B to start (rated 50, more on that in the next section) only to see him drop to 35 Jan 1st. he went from being my starter to not even making the MLB squad. Ratings should change before you resign players or sign free agents. Also, most teams seem to resign their free agents before the signing period starts, so there are very few good options to upgrade your team in the offseason.


The OMG What Where They Thinking:

The three things that drive me crazy in this game: The way you resign your own players, the ratings system for players, and random "game manager mode." First, resigning players. Negotiating your MLB players is fine. What kills me is negotiating with all the minor league-ers in AAA, AA, A+, A, and SS (rookie league). The problem is that every single minor player will gladly except a minor league contact (does not count against your budget) for 1 year. If you offer more than 1 year they will reject you 99 out of 100 times unless you offer a lot more money. The problem? You have to go into every single player and offer them a deal. This wouldn't be so bad if the game left you at the screen where you resigned your minor leaguer. But, instead, it jumps you back to the MLB tab. So you have to click on the minor league level tab every time you want to resign a minor leaguer. Whats worse is that you can't even sort them by overall talent, so you have to look at each player individually before going back and offering a contract. So if you have 25 players at each minor league level (5) and then you have to click three times per player (once for the level tab, once to check their ratings and once to offer them a deal, you are looking at 375 clicks. It became so time consuming that I gave up before I finished with the AAA squad. Secondly, they ratings are very strange. They range from 20-80, where most games range 0-100. The problem here is that you end up with the vast majority of players falling between 45-55. Anything over 60 is a "great player" and 70 or over is elite. Somehow, Mark Texiera is only rated 60! In fact, the only player rated 80 is that certain picture the Yanks threw a ton of cash at earlier this year. Its just a very odd way to rank, makes some players seem ranked well below their skills and makes you feel like you are overpaying for everyone. Lastly, there is a mode where you can "manage" your team on the field. You can't play anyone, its greatly sped up, you can't really "scout" your talent, and the presentation is horrible. I really wonder why they added this feature at all. It would have ben better if they added commentators or something. Also, on a side note, you can't even focus on certain players to help them develop. I could go on but i'll stop.


The Verdict:

If you are looking for a game that resembles work more than it does entertainment then this game is for you! You get the feeling as you plod along playing this game that 2K Games just threw this game out there to milk the last untapped segment of their MLB License. There are so many things that could have been better. One thing I didn't rant on was the interface. They took this game directy from their XBox360 platform. I mean this literally, and they didn't even bother to remove the xbox icon buttons telling you how to differnt things. If you do decide to get this game make sure you but a PC Xbos usb controller. Also, many of the features seem like they should have been side notes added to their main flagship, MLB 2k'9.

If you are looking for a great gaming experience that mixes fun, game play, and management AND you have a PS2 or a PS3, save you money and buy MLB The Show 09 when it comes out. Its the best baseball game out there, has many of the management features that this games has AND they have added the rule 5 draft and arbitration for the upcoming release.

A Terribly Flawed Attempt
Even though you can't actually pitch, bat, or field in this game, the chance to simulate being a GM with real players, trades, waivers, free agents, the Rule V draft, and sabermetric stats, and then watch the games, sounded like fun to me. It's not, though, because it doesn't get any of those things right. For example:

1. The statistics are incorrect. If your starting pitcher gives you two innings, but your team wins the game, the starter still gets the win. The game is filled with misinterpretations of the basic rules of baseball, like this one.

2. There is no way to sort players by their skills. Clicking on each player in every league one-at-a-time, and scribbling the results on a spreadsheet, makes the game unrealistic and tedious at the same time.

3. The players, especially the stars, seem to have been assigned skill levels based on random chance, rather than an appraisal of their abilities or statistics. Also, players' skill ratings change dramatically from year to year, often with no relationship whatsoever to their age, health, or stats. (Using the realistic 20 to 80 rating scale is great, but the ratings the game assigns to the players are random, and change randomly.)

4. Unlike in real baseball, you can immediately trade anyone you just signed as a free agent. In real baseball, you have to wait until midseason to trade a free agent that you signed that year.

5. Unlike in real baseball, you can call up to the majors and send down to the minors players (who have options) without the mandatory ten day waiting period.

6. No lists of top prospects, either in the aggregate or by position, are maintained. (I'm not convinced that the AI is sufficient to figure out who the top prospects are, anyway.)

7. The AI is far more artificial than intelligent. Top prospects like Mat Gamel are placed on waivers in 2009 (without any reason, such as an injury). The computer-controlled general mangers lack distinct philosophies and strategies.

8. Even if you create your own players or edit the existing ones, you cannot use your edits in all aspects of the game. The players you create or edit are restricted to certain game modes.

In short, this game is not worth your money; it wouldn't even be worth playing if it were free. In my opinion, it is the direct result of the lack of competition in baseball games that began when MLB sold the exclusive rights to make baseball games to 2K Sports.

Video Card
I have waited for a long time to get this game, and have gone to many stores looking for it. I finally get the game, I wait while while it installs, and can't wait to play it. Then I click on the link and the game says that MLB Front Office Manager doesn't support my graphics card. I am going to try and get a new graphics card, but I am very dissapointed