(The reason it's only on my journal once is because this is basically all I played this year so it'd be on there way too often.)

Decided to get fully into MLB the Show's Live Service mode this season (Diamond Dynasty) and I'm REALLY happy I did. Not only is it one of the least greedy "card game" modes in a modern sports game (I spent exactly $0 on my all-99 endgame team), it's also seriously addictive - this is the most time I've spent with a yearly baseball game since 2013.

From the Faces of the Franchise featured program in April all the way to the 2022 Finest one, I was invested in upgrading my team and playing the different modes with it.

Both the card marketplace and pack balancing were excellent this year, (although they should find a way to keep live series cards relevant longer into the game's cycle) and the balance of online and offline modes finally reached a point where both kinds of players can be happy. There was new content from the live service team consistently throughout the MLB season.

A big shoutout goes to the early game where I found a bunch of different players to add to the squad that I wouldn't necessarily have predicted I'd use.

In terms of modes, I have to praise them as well: the debut year of Mini Seasons has been fun, Showdown is fun, Conquest is alright, Play vs CPU works well enough, and the online modes are well polished for the most part.

Gameplay was great this season as well; the controls for zone hitting feel spot-on, and the pinpoint pitching is easily the best pitching control scheme San Diego Studio has worked with so far.

The game looks great on Xbox Series S, with most of the action feeling smooth and consistent. Facescans continue to get better and better, and ballparks look almost identical to their real-life versions. The lighting continues to lag behind other modern games, though, and I hope it's improved in MLB 23. The new commentary is a good first step, but it needs refinement in the future.

I'm probably going to play throughout the winter, but I'm done obsessively improving my team. Once I finish the 2022 Postseason Program and add Retro Finest Carlos Delgado to the squad, I'm probably looking at my endgame team.

Road to the Show and Franchise mode are still awful, unfortunately. The lack of improvements made to those modes are why I wasn't big on MLB 19 or MLB 20 and if I hadn't gotten into MLB 22's flagship mode, I'd probably be similarly sour on it.

Ultimately though, Diamond Dynasty is strong enough to recommend MLB 22 to any baseball fan, and I'll probably be pre-ordering MLB 23's MVP or Digital Deluxe editions in Spring 2023. San Francisco Giants infielder Brandon Crawford will be my Opening Day Shortstop.

Here's my endgame squad, excluding any 2022 Postseason cards I don't have yet (2017 Postseason George Springer, Harper, Yordan, maaaaybe Pena) and Delgado.

CF Prime '19 George Springer
SS Retro Finest '17 Francisco Lindor
1B Finest '22 Freddie Freeman
3B Finest '22 Manny Machado
LF Finest '22 Julio Rodriguez
RF Takashi Okazaki Ken Griffey Jr.
2B Finest '22 Xander Bogaerts
C Finest '22 Adley Rutschman

C Finest '22 Will Smith
1B Finest '22 Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
SS Finest '22 Bobby Witt Jr.
RF Milestone '22 Cody Bellinger
SS 2022 Postseason '22 Trea Turner

SP Finest '22 Sandy Alcantara
SP 2022 Postseason '22 Luis Castillo
SP Retro Finest '18 Chris Sale
SP Legends of the Franchise Jered Weaver
SP Finest '22 Tarik Skubal

RP 2022 Postseason '22 Yency Almonte
RP Finest '22 Evan Phillips
RP Finest '20 Devin Williams
RP Retro Finest '77 Bruce Sutter
RP Takashi Okazaki Dennis Eckersley
SU Milestone '16 Zack Britton
SU Finest '22 Felix Bautista
CL Monthly Awards '22 Camilo Doval

This is over all a fun baseball sim, however there are some things I find annoying. My Diamond Dynasty team logo and team settings randomly reset to default after turning the game off (even if I manually save). The sound track is pretty small and bad. After adding cards to a collection and backing out of that collections you automatically return to the top of the main page. When starting the game it often forgets my favorite team, play style and difficulty which results in the in-game tutorial to repeat every time I boot up the game. Granted this could all be due to pulling my save data from Sony's cloud or the Xbox game streaming. Either way, I have sunk a ton of hours into the game and I have fun playing it.

It looks great and the gameplay flows pretty well with some gameplay additions like locking the PCI to different sections of the zone. I think its smart to have the minimum buying/selling of cards matter more on the overall and not the rank as those get higher. But it comes with lots of changes that feel backwards in Diamond Dynasty, what feels like a simpler Road to The Show, and still the same Franchise mode they've had for years. I really wish they'd bring back more of the Franchise elements that they used to have and that Madden's Franchise mode has, ie player marketing, prices for concessions and tickets and such, and maintaining and upgrading your stadium. The Show had it first and I really wish it would come back. The changes made to March To October are welcome and interesting though for prolonged playthroughs in that mode. Overall feels like a little step backwards from 21

A step back this year as SDS engaged in less communication and gameplay updates as the year went along. This was also the year where the game didn't reflect the real-life sport as The Show didn't add a DH to Diamond Dynasty until the following year's game.

While 21 made a great addition with pinpoint pitching, people had mastered it by year's end, so 22 added some randomness to the pitch result. However, this made the gameplay worse as it made pitching more unpredictable and frustrating, and primarily rewarded online players who are better at hitting. 22 did add PCI anchoring, which was good, but ultimately still did not solve the "sinker" meta. Also, crossplay seemed to get worse as the season progressed - so much so that it only made sense to limit online games to those playing on the same console.

Virtually identical to last year's release, right down to the in-game menus and graphical interface. There's nothing wrong with that - hell, there's everything right with that! - but it did contribute to the overall "been there, done that" feeling I had while playing this game every night for the month of April. I think I dumped more hours into The Show 22 than I did The Show 21 last year, but felt like I accomplished even less this time around. As long as I have Game Pass and as long as these are part of it, I bet I come back every April for more. But thirty or forty hours into this particular title, it's just time for me to move on, not out of boredom but self-preservation. There are only so many hours and so many days, and such.