Little League World Series Baseball 2022

My honest first reaction after booting this up for a Saturday session with controllers around the coffee table: the visuals are actually charming. The comic-book-meets-anime art style IguanaBee chose fits the Little League license well, stadiums feel alive, and player models are colourful without being garish. For about three minutes, I thought we had a sleeper hit on our hands. Then someone hit a fly ball to centre field. The batting and pitching are the two pillars holding this game up, and to be fair they hold. Pitching asks you to select your pitch type, choose placement, and nail a timing meter on release, which keeps even new players engaged without drowning them in menus. The hitting side mirrors that approachability, letting you aim your swing zone and time the contact, giving the batter a genuine sense of agency. The Super Abilities, unlocked by filling a team meter through solid plays, add a fun wrinkle: Slow Time buys you extra reaction time at the plate, Bat Tank inflates a batter's power for a pitch, and Dash gives fielders a burst of speed. Each team is locked to one ability, so part of the pre-game fun is checking which power your crew has. The problems stack up fast once the ball leaves the bat, though. Outfielders have robotic, pinpoint-accurate arms that eliminate doubles and triples almost entirely, so most rallies become a monotonous loop of singles and the occasional homer. The fielding camera is the bigger headache: the game constantly switches your active fielder to the wrong player, and when you try to correct it the character moves slower than when the AI controls him. Baserunners are no better, charging to the next bag even when a fly ball is clearly in the air, resulting in routine double plays that feel less like your mistake and more like the game failing you. The QTE system, which fires off during big moments like close plays at the plate or robbery attempts at the wall, compounds this frustration because it randomly cycles through timed presses, rapid mashes, and button sequences with barely enough visual warning to respond. For the four-friends-on-the-couch question I always ask: local multiplayer supports up to four players across Quick Play, Exhibition, Tournament, and Championship modes, and you can tweak innings count, steal rules, run rules, and even dial down QTE involvement in Tournament settings. Championship mode is single-player only and locks you into default rules. There is no online multiplayer at all, full stop. The Grove hub lets you complete challenges to unlock stat-boosting stickers and customise jerseys, batting stances, and equipment, which gives younger players something to chase between games. Repeat commentary lines and a mouse cursor that stubbornly parks itself on screen during controller play are small irritants that remind you the PC port got the least amount of attention. If you are shopping this for a child who watches the real Little League World Series and just wants to play as their favourite regional team, the approachability of the controls and the absence of any inappropriate content make it tolerable. For anyone older expecting a tighter arcade experience along the lines of Super Mega Baseball, the fielding chaos will wear you out before the second game is over. The honest bracket for this one is: younger kids in a local multiplayer setup, preferably with expectations calibrated accordingly.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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