Welcome to my Game of the Year Extravaganza. Last year, I went through my honorable mentions then dug into my top ten games of the year. This year will be a little different. I am not talking about my honorable mentions and instead will be spending one day on each of my Top 10 games. The final thing to know is that these are games that I played and beat this year, not just games that came out in 2016. Today, we look at the only sports game to make it onto my list this year.

10. Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings

When the Giant Bomb crew did a quick look of this game, I was intrigued by what it was doing but I didn’t feel like spending money on something that may not be good. You can only get so much from a Quick Look so I waited. It then became one of the Games with Gold and I leapt at the chance to try it out. I then grew to love to play this game. If I had between 30-45 minutes to kill, I would load this up and play a game. The games would normally take that long because I would score between 15 and 30 runs each game because I wasn’t doing much to challenge myself against the AI.

The look of the game is very exaggerated and the character creator is decent to play around with. There are not a lot of ways to customize your characters but there is enough to spend some time messing around with it.

There is no multiplayer in the game but it doesn’t matter because the mechanics of the game are really well done. I created a team of all female players and have been kicking ass with them from the start. The actual gameplay is both very simple to work with and also has surprising depth that you can work with and engage with. The higher you crank the AI up, the more you have to finesse and actually think about how you are hitting and pitching the ball. One of the most surprising parts of the game is how much fun it is to pitch the ball. You choose from 9 different pitches to throw and you have full control over where the ball goes. You can pitch either in a normal manner or in a power manner. I have not done much with the power pitching because it is a little harder to control.

The other thing that keeps me coming back to this game is the ability you have to improve your character through giving them buffs to their stats. Each player starts out with stats based on the team they are a part of. You can choose from around 4 types of teams: power hitters, great fielders, great hitters and all around teams. I chose to play one of the power hitters and have been trying to gear my players towards their strengths while also looking to make them as well rounded as I can. You choose from 4 different areas to hire people in: trainer, coach, style and and gear. Based off of those, you can then increase or even decrease their stats in multiple areas.

I have used this game as one of my podcast games and it is so great to do so. The only reason it’s not any higher is that I can only play one game at a time because it does get to be a bit of a slog to play it for more than one game in a row. It’s a highly enjoyable game but it only works in small bursts.