Baseball Hits 26 is a brand-new mobile baseball game that arrived just in time for MLB Opening Day next week. Ares Interactive and Zebra Partners were gracious enough to let me try the game early and even sent me a package to get started on the game. Here’s what I thought about the latest in a long line of fun mobile sports games.

Baseball Hits 26 Review

I love mobile baseball games. I think the app I might spend the most time on is MLB9Innings, which I’ve been playing more or less every day for over a decade now. With that in mind, I’m absolutely the target audience for Baseball Hits 26, which doesn’t have MLB team licensing but does have MLB player licensing.

You can get Cal Raleigh, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Seiya Suzuki (all three of whom I have in my growing lineup), and plenty of other amazing baseball players. Most of them start out pretty low-rated, which is where I found one of the things I enjoyed most.

There are tiers of cards available: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, and ultra rare. I haven’t yet gotten an ultra rare card, but I will one day. Each of these cards starts out in low overall rating territory, but there’s a wide range of upgrading available. This is what makes it fun. While you wait to try and get better tiered players, you can upgrade the ones you have to make your team better in the interim.

The gameplay really shines here. It differs from MLB9Innings, which is good. We don’t need a duplicate because it’ll never live up. It’s tap-based, so it’s extremely simple. Most game modes don’t involve pitching, so you’re just watching the pitch and timing up your tap if it’s a strike. If you are pitching, once again, you just tap the right location to fire it in.

It’s simple, addictive, and engaging. There is something incredibly satisfying with a hard-hit ball. As you watch the ball soar off of cover star Cal Raleigh’s bat, it looks fantastic. The difference between good contact and bad is visible, and it’s so much fun to watch the ball keep carrying right out of the park.

The choice-based baserunning is fantastic, too. It doesn’t come up as often as I might like, but it’s fun when it does. It gives you a bit more control over the non-hitting portion of the game, and there’s some strategy involved. You’ll always be given a percentage chance of success, but it’s not always predictive. I’ve been caught stealing with a 90% success chance.

There are a couple of downsides. First and foremost, there are a few too many animations. I don’t need to see the hitter reacting to ball four by starting towards first base, a fade-out, and then him getting to first base. Honestly, I don’t need to see my character rounding first on a single. I know based on the hit that he got there safely, so it just adds a little bit of dead time that’s unnecessary.

The bounce mechanics on the baseball are sometimes weird. If you hit a line drive in the gap, it might take a comically massive bounce and end up as a ground-rule double. It would not bounce like that ordinarily, and if I have a good baserunner on first or at the plate, it prevents me from having the chance to take an extra base or get a triple.

There are also not a ton of varieties of hits. Unless you perfectly time a bunt, there’s no infield single to be had. A well-placed dribbler isn’t happening. A carom off the mound isn’t happening in Baseball Hits 26, and now that I’m thinking about it, you rarely ever even see the pitcher field a grounder.

Those are mostly minor nitpicks, though. This is a fun game with a few different game modes to keep things interested. What keeps me coming back is the insatiable desire to get better cards and keep upgrading them. It’s addictive, almost.

I was also going to complain about the initial lack of difficulty in Baseball Hits 26, as I didn’t lose once in the first 20 games and it was pretty easy to win. Then, the playoff game to move into the next tier (a harder difficulty tier of games) humbled me really fast.

Ninth Inning

If you’re looking for some casual, simple, mobile fun, then look no further than Baseball Hits 26. It’s a simple game with few mechanics, but it’s designed so perfectly for some casual gameplay on your mobile device, and it achieves pretty much everything it sets out to and provides a good time.

Score: 4/5