You have to hand it to Major League Baseball players - they must be some of the hardest working guys in professional sports. Every year they drag their aching bodies out onto the field one hundred and sixty-two times just to earn the right to compete in even more games in the playoffs. By comparison, their colleagues in the NBA play eighty-two regular season games and English Premiership footballers only have to contend with a maximum of around sixty outings a year (including all possible cup matches). Alright, so over the course of each MLB encounter most of the players spend the majority of their time standing around scratching themselves, sitting around scratching themselves, or spitting more than a camel at a tobacco chewing contest, but despite this they still play to more sold-out crowds than a Chuckle Brothers' summer season in Blackpool. Trying to immerse you once again in this most challenging of sports, Sony have followed up their release last year of the original MLB game on PSP with an updated version - MLB 06 The Show.

MLB06 boasts an impressive line up of options to choose from. Apart from the usual quick game and exhibition match choices there's also the opportunity to take a team through an entire MLB campaign in season mode. If, however, you want to take the realism even further, the career option allow you to create a player and lead them, over a maximum of ten seasons, from a fresh faced rookie to a hall-of-famer. As well as these modes there's also the ability to take part in a Home Run Derby or a King of the Diamond competition, plus the option for online play.

Whether you're pitching or hitting in MLB06, the standard camera angle for most of the action is a fixed view looking out on the field of play from behind home plate. From here the batter stands immediately in front of you, facing away towards the pitcher, who stalks his mound in the near distance. The best thing about seeing the game from this position is the excellent view it gives of the all-important strike zone. It also allows you to admire the attention to detail that the developers have put into the batter and pitcher sprites; not only do each of these almost always resemble the physical features of their real-life counterparts, but every pitcher's throwing action and batter's stance and swing has been recreated with amazing accuracy - and it's all presented with super smooth animation. The high quality visuals continues throughout the presentation; from the giant liberty bell at Citizens Bank Park to the green monster at Fenway, the home of each MLB team has been faithfully recreated and is instantly recognisable. When the players take to the field, the starting line-up lists include photos of almost all of the players. All of this, combined with the mandatory presence of more stats than you can swing a bat at, lends a real televisual quality to much of what you see.

Sadly, there are some small letdowns in the graphics. For a start, whenever a ball is hit and needs to be fielded, the game breaks from the normal camera angle to a wider shot of the park. Whilst the increased size of the area covered by this new view allows you a much better sense of special awareness to carry out your ball retrieving or base running duties, it does create problems. The small size of the fielders and the ball makes accurately controlling the little guys difficult, especially in the most important moments when things tend to happen very quickly. The other disappointment is the standard of the graphics for the crowd - these are often the most overlooked aspect of the visuals in any sports title, but in MLB06 they are really bad. It seems like they've either been copied directly from a Megadrive game or that all of the inhabitants of LEGOland have come on a day's outing.

If anything, the quality of the sound in MLB06 is even higher than that of the visuals. Unfortunately, noise from the PSP's speaker does have a tinny edge to it, so it's well worth sticking in a pair of headphones to allow the game to fully envelop you in that ballpark atmosphere. Not only are the comforting sounds of ball on bat and glove present, but the umpires' calls are clear and the usual selection of classic organ tunes blare out at various intervals. On top of all this, the crowd sounds change depending on the current state of the play - it's a fantastic feeling to quiet the home fans by striking out their team before turning the silence into a cacophony of boos as you smash a laser beam of a home run out of the stadium. A special mention must also go to the three man in-game commentary; although, as always, you will hear the same phrases repeated from time to time and, at points, the flow of what is being said fails to keep pace with the action, the presence of the trio calling the action is a phenomenal achievement for the PSP and it has been done to a standard that is easily high enough to justify its inclusion.

With big flaws in the graphics and sound departments being about as few and far between as Manny Ramirez' appearances at the All Star Weekend, the gameplay certainly has a lot to live up to. Fortunately, MLB06 plays as well as its appearance suggests and a large part of the reason for this is down to the game mechanics. The size of the strike zone for each batter depends upon their height and is represented on screen as a translucent box, the inside of which is split up into sections that form a three by three grid. The game also personalises this grid for each individual hitter by shading red any sections of the strike zone that they hit the ball well in and colouring blue any sections of the zone where their hitting is poor.

Batting is less complicated than pitching and involves a basic choice between a normal swing and a power swing. As well as this, you also have the ability to guess the type of pitch and whereabouts the ball will be thrown - and getting either of these two variables correct greatly improves your chances of a successful time at bat. You also have the option of trying to control which direction you hit the ball in, something that can prove very useful if, for example, you have a runner on first and are trying to avoid a double play.

Pitching is a slightly more complex assignment than slugging but is still simple enough to get a grip of with a bit of practice. Each pitcher has a selection of their four most commonly used pitches for you to select from and, once you've made your decision, the analog nub is then employed to decide where you want to aim your throw. Finally, the good old three button press power/accuracy bar is brought up, with your first press of the X button starting the bar rising and your second stopping it as close to the top as possible to determine the power. Once you've hit the button a second time the bar begins to fall again and you need to time your third press to halt it at a specific point on the way back down. How near you get to this marker decides how close your pitch is to the position you selected to place it in.

Baseball is a highly cerebral game filled with subtle nuances and quirks that make it so interesting. Whilst recreating all of this in an artificial form may never provide a totally faithful experience, MLB06 is a very impressive attempt. Each contest contains a believable number of runs, strikes, balls and broken bats in every game and the pace is virtually spot on, thanks to generally relaxed feel peppered with explosive moments of action. The depth contained within the control system also helps to put across the battle of minds between the pitcher and batter that is at the centre of any real game. The tension created in the split second when you must decide whether to swing at a pitch or hold your nerve and hope it misses the zone is amazingly true to life. Similarly, if you're on the mound, the way the power/accuracy bar moves faster and the accuracy zone becomes smaller as your pitcher tires, or just after he's given up a hit, is a very clever way of reflecting his fragile metal state.

A final sign of the high quality is shown by the way the umpire's calls on whether a pitch is a ball or a strike are sometimes very dubious indeed. In many other games this lack of accuracy would send you mad, but in the real world, baseball umpires do not have the benefit of video replays and sometimes get the call wrong. The fact that this has been included and that the commentators acknowledge that the umpire may have got it wrong is another nice touch.

There's no denying that baseball is a complex affair that takes some understanding. Anyone relatively new to the sport hoping to gain a better appreciation for it by playing MLB06 will need to be aware that even in rookie mode, the lowest of the four difficulty settings, both the game and the instruction manual assume a high level of knowledge and those with limited experience will have to be prepared to learn as they play.

Even if you don't need any assistance because you're already a baseball expert there are still a number of gameplay features that cause some annoyance. Firstly, having to use the analog nub to decide on the location of every pitch is often a frustrating, time consuming, wrist aching chore, as the nub doesn't easily lend itself to the fine touch needed to position the aiming dot in the exact place you want it. Secondly, manually controlling the fielders is not only more difficult than it should be due to their small size, but also because of their uneven movement. The combination of these factors makes the precision that is often required hard to achieve and, as a consequence, hideously embarrassing errors sometimes result from situations where you have done little wrong. Finally, you do sometimes get the impression that the game has already decided on the result of a match before it ends, the most obvious example of this being when two teams go into the final inning tied. In such a situation one of the sides almost always pulls out a run to win the game, no matter how hard the other tries. These slight quibbles aside, however, if you like your baseball then it's a safer bet than any Pete Rose ever made that you'll find plenty of enjoyment in MLB06.

Sony have improved upon their original MLB outing and created a game that is about as close to real baseball as you're going to find on the PSP. Probably the best compliment that can be paid to the developers is that MLB 06 The Show demonstrates a level of appreciation and dedication to the sport very close to that of the hard working players of the actual game - and it's reflected in every aspect of the authentic high quality gameplay and presentation throughout.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).