As it is with the dawn of every baseball season, the launch of the newest MLB The Show game brings about the usual sources of excitement that we’ve come to expect over the years from playing the series: a bunch of new and promising features waiting to be explored, loads of welcome tweaks to an already solid core of gameplay and — of course — a flurry of people logging on at midnight when the game's officially released, causing the overwhelmed servers to quickly become unstable.

Okay, that last one is probably more of a continued source of frustration than excitement, but at least we can say the servers have been a little better than they were last year.

With only limited time to play the game since its release on Tuesday, here are a few stray observations on what has stood out to me so far, besides the inconsistent online gameplay:

The Intro

MLB The Show 17 has an absolutely stellar introduction that uses chalk on a scoreboard to explore the history of the game. From the opening sounds of Vin Scully to the infamous Bill Buckner botched play to the Blue Jays walk-off World Series victory all the way up to the Cubs finally winning it all last year, a rich tapestry of classic baseball moments are woven together in a spine-tingling and surprisingly emotional initiation that leaves you especially amped to take the field and start playing ball.

Ball Physics and Humanity AI

The highlight of my short time playing the game so far has been these two nifty upgrades, offering more realism in the form of ball physics and increased awareness from the AI. Each time the bat is put on the ball and you watch as it spins and slices in ways the series hasn’t seen before, it’s clear that a lot of development time has been spent trying to replicate all of the unpredictable contact that can happen in real life. Similarly, the days of being frustrated at how long a fielder takes in getting the ball to a base or even back into the infield appear to be over. This is thanks to a new humanity AI system that sees fielders deliver the ball with a required sense of urgency when speedy runners are on the base-paths or, in case of a routine play, with an appropriately lackadaisical or carefree air.

Presentation

Every year, the first thing I love to do with the new MLB The Show game is play a nice and slow game in broadcast mode while skipping as little as possible, just to see all the new camera angles and little details that have been added to make the game feel as immersive as possible. With its updated player models, crisper animations and MLB Network-style production values, it’s hard to find much to fault about how gorgeous the game looks (aside from the occasional dip in frame-rate amongst some of its transitions).

Commentary

The addition of Dan Plesac and Harold Reynolds to the MLB The Show booth may provide an opportunity to showcase some new voices, but it also reveals they may still have a ways to go. For one thing, it only takes playing a couple of games before you start hearing Plesac and Reynolds repeating the same phrases and anecdotes. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that, unlike Matt Vasgersian’s short and sweet play-by-play, their commentary often rambles on for a bit and it’s not uncommon for some of their banter to continue long past it being relevant to the action on the field.

Road to the Show

The jury is still out for me at the moment on whether the additional options in Road to the Show really bring anything substantial to the mode. Yes, it's kind of fun to get to choose what our created player says throughout his development, but it doesn't appear to alter the familiar trajectory of his career all that much. Also, the awkward documentary framework hasn't done much (at least in the early going) to successfully dramatize all the same old decisions a young ballplayer must make on his way to the big leagues.