Like its PlayStation2 counterpart, MLB 07 The Show for PlayStation Portable sports some innovative freshness, mainly in the game's pitching system, while offence gets a bit of a touch-up as well.

On the tossing side of the things, there's a new pitching system where your pitcher's pitches are ranked from best to worst, then arranged thusly on your controller so that your best pitch is the X button and your weakest pitch is the R1 button.

Also new is a cool "confidence meter" which has your good pitches getting better as you use them successfully (stronger, faster, more break, etc.), though doing so too much will weaken other pitches and may also tip the opposition off as to which pitch you're going to throw next.

On the offensive side of the thing, batting, a new "Swing Analysis" system lets you go back and look at your swing to determine whether the pitch was a ball or a strike, too high or too low and, correspondingly, to see if the timing of your swing was too early or too late. It's a very cool idea that takes some of the mystery out of the batting aspect of the game, giving you a swift handle on what you are doing right or wrong.

Unfortunately for the PSP version of MLB 07 The Show, there's a persistent glitch that pops up every time the ball is hit. Despite the apparent horsepower of Sony's little widescreen wonder, the game slows down whenever it's trying to figure out where the ball went in order to synch up a sudden new view, then plays catch-up with action on display. Combine that with the fact that the various camera perspectives are none too swift nor spectacular to start with and you got a frustration factor that pretty much makes the game unplayable.

So what would otherwise be a great step forward for Sony's The Show franchise, MLB 07 has frame rate issues and feeble camera view problems that suck it right back down to mediocrity -- underneath it, really; a game worth avoiding even when you find it in the bargain bin, unless you're the forgiving sort and need your baseball fix to go.