Score
Gameplay:	4
Graphics:	5
Sound:	5
FunFactor:	6
PlasmaFactor:	8
Overall:	5.6

Baseball Mogul 2007 Review
May 8, 2006 by Andrew Vawter

by Andrew Vawter - May 8, 2006

Baseball Mogul 2007 is the latest in the long series of mogul games from Sports Mogul Inc. The game is a simulation based on managing a sports team. Features include the ability to manage your team with an objective of making your team one of the most popular MLB teams. Also, you’ll have the ability to control aspects of your home stadium.

Boring...

Baseball Mogul 2007 involves a lot of statistics: basically, you’ll spend all day attempting to increase the amount of wins your team has by spending money in various areas. These include hiring and drafting new players, improving your home cities, and increasing your teams’ popularity while at the same time increasing your gross revenue from each game.

Earning money in Baseball Mogul 2007 involves two things; increasing how much fans want to come to the game and winning the ball games. Some teams start with rapid fans (Yankees) while other teams starts at a disadvantage where there fans don’t care.

Fortunately, you always have the ability to encourage more fans to show up. In order to increase the amount of fans coming to the stadium, you have the ability to change many settings such as not broadcasting your baseball game in the local area a local area blackout will force more fans to come to the stadium but will cause some fans to lose faith in there team. You can also choose to raise ticket prices, put the game on pay TV only, and increase concession prices.

Some of the positive sides of Baseball Mogul 2007 include the ability to choose teams dating back all the way to 1901. You can also do a fantasy draft where you can choose any player from any team from any time period, thus creating a super-team. This is a welcome feature in the game since you can make the perfect team or build yourself a team of the worst players and see just how good of a manager you truly are.

In Baseball Mogul 2007 you can create your own stadium. Selecting different cities which sit at different heights you also have the ability to increase the size of the field. It is possible to build a field as small or large as you want. Furthermore you can choose how many seats your stadium will have, how comfortable the seats are, and the sight lines of the field. Other choices include turf types, foul ground size, visibility, infield grass, and infield quality all of which affect how players play on the ground. All the changes are summed up on the right half of the game which shows the effects of the stadium.

You can choose various other abilities like what kind of plays your team uses. Plays include Hit and Run, Sacrifice Bunt, and Squeeze Play. All of these choices will help or hinder your team by increasing how much risk the simulation is willing to take with your team. One thing worth noting though is you don’t actually control the players for the most part, you’re more like a general manager more then a player in the game. This is strictly a simulation game as opposed to an EA Sports game.

The Box Looks Better Then the Game.

The graphics in Baseball Mogul 2007 are rather bland - nothing in it looks defined. All players for the most part look the exact same as a matter of fact each character is identical in the game play area except if there a left or right handed pitcher or hitter. Beyond each team having a slightly different color uniform there’s very little distinguishing one player on a team from another.

Sound Header

Baseball Mogul 2007 really doesn’t have all that many sounds to hear in it. Honestly, it’s rather quiet beyond the crack of a bat or the calls from the umpire. Overall there just aren’t very many sounds, and what sounds there aren’t really sampled well.

 

But it’s a Simulation!

The actual simulation part of the game uses standard charts and graphs to display information. And there is a lot of information to display in Baseball Mogul 2007. Fortunately the display system is well tuned and you don’t have to go digging through menu after menu in order finding something. While looking at graphs and charts isn’t really all that entertaining at least they can be easily found.

Some of the better parts of the game come up when you’re attempting to increase your team’s popularity. You have the ability to every year start constructing a new stadium or to try and move your team to a different area. Also, in order to help you make money you can change the price of food at your stadium by raising the price of hot dogs or ice cream. When you go and build your stadium there’s a great number of areas to choose from each with drawbacks and benefits, everywhere from Waco, Texas to New York City can be chosen.

 

Not Really Worth the Money.

As far as a simulation goes, Baseball Mogul 2006 is merely okay it really doesn’t offer enough features over older versions of this game to truly make this worth the buy. Still, the ability to play as almost any player from 1901-2006 is a nice feature. So in the end I’d say for those of you who have played previous versions of this game and are looking for a roster update and a smattering of new features you may find this exactly what you’re looking for. Everyone else, though, I’d recommend you try the demo first as this game really doesn’t offer all that much.