[84CubsFan]

Five minutes.

Five minutes is all that it took for me to get my OOTP excitement back.

OOTP 2006 is, in my opinion, a horrible game. I tried it. I tried it again. And then I tried it again a few more times. I told myself that the patches would fix the major problems and make it fun again. But it never happened.

Since then I've been playing version 6.5, and only online. I lost my interest in solo leagues. I was sceptical about v.2007 and almost decided to wait for the demo. But I decided I couldn't wait. I decided that I would preorder and take the discount for the new game that I knew I would eventually buy anyway.

I did this because I have, like many who frequent this community board, for the past 20 years of my life been searching for the perfect computer baseball game. OOTP 2007 will not be perfect. But after five minutes I know it will be a game that I will play.

The install was flawless.

The interface is perfectly smooth and fast -- far smoother and faster than any other OOTP I've ever played.

Within seconds I created a fictional league using one of the many possible default settings (hmm...cool...let's see a Japanese league...why not?). I decided that maybe I'd start as commissioner. Click. No, wait. Unclick. Actually I'll start unemployed. I remembered the tedium of this in v.2006, but I thought hey, if I try it at least I'll know. So I clicked to create the league and again, within seconds (like ten or less), the fictional world was born.

I wanted to see FaceGen, fearful that it might not work. I was amazed by how easy it was to navigate from manager screen to league home to team home to lineups to top players to top organizations and back again. I wasn't able to do this in v.2006 right after install. No way.

Then I clicked on a name. With lightning speed and smoothness, there was a face staring back at me. So cool. I clicked another player. Then another. Then I tried a coach (not only was it easy to find the coaches, they looked 55!).

Then I simmed to opening day. It took not ten minutes. Not five minutes. Not one minute. Seconds.

I simmed a game. Seconds.

I smiled.

And then I turned the game off and came here.

I'll say again, OOTP2007 will not be perfect for me. I'll find flaws (two very minor ones already!) and there will be frustrations and I will hope for future improvements. But after this quick spin -- I know it's not much -- I'm sure of one thing: I'm going to have a good time playing with this game. It's a good time I haven't experienced since v.5. And that is very cool.

I know I don't post here all that often so my recommendation may not carry much weight. But I'm a rabid baseball fan. Have been since I was a little kid. For those of you who are still sitting on the fence, try the demo. Just try it.

Try it for five minutes.