Modern AAA sports games have been overrun by card-collecting modes. The explosive popularity (and profitability) of EA Sports FC’s Ultimate Team has compelled most of the other major sports game franchises to imitate it — each EA title has its own Ultimate Team mode, the NBA 2K franchise has MyTeam, and MLB The Show has Diamond Dynasty.

Beyond the predatory microtransactions that are ever present in some of these games, these card-collecting modes can make it feel like the genre is running away from its roots: having fun playing virtual sports with your friends. Most of these modes try to awkwardly shoehorn in a way to play cooperatively in an attempt to overcome this, but only MLB The Show is able to deliver on an actually fun co-op experience.

Diamond Dynasty’s ranked co-op is simple. Before games, each player chooses three hitters, one starting pitcher, and two relievers from their individual Diamond Dynasty roster to add to a collective roster that both players build together. The game then fills in any remaining gaps from a consistent pool of players to build out a full roster of 26. The gameplay side of things works on the basis of switching off who’s doing what. During odd innings, Player 1 pitches and catches while Player 2 fields, and during even innings, it’s reversed. On offense, players switch off who’s hitting with every at-bat, meaning that both players get the chance to hit with everyone on the roster more than once across nine innings.

It’s a tremendously straightforward system, but also one........

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