MLB Slam! Hands-On Impressions

THQ and Hexacto Games have teamed up to produce a licensed baseball game called MLB Slam! for Nokia's N-Gage. The version we've seen is clearly unfinished, but it looks like it at least has a good number of options for players to choose from.

The game's quick start mode lets you get into a baseball game without any real fuss. You simply choose a difficulty setting and you're on your way. But if you want to get a little deeper than that, MLB Slam! has plenty of additional options. Spring training lets you play an exhibition game. The game's season mode lets you play a full 162-game season or a condensed 81-game season. Home run derby mode lets you play in a pure hitting competition against a computer batter, though you don't actually see the computer-controlled batter hit. The dream team mode lets you spend cash--presumably earned in other modes--to purchase players from other teams and construct your own superteam. On top of all that, the game has support for two-player games via the N-Gage's built-in Bluetooth support.

The gameplay follows the standard cursor-based approach taken by most modern baseball games. When pitching you'll see a box that marks the strike zone, and you'll be able to select from one of three pitches. Once you've selected your pitch, you can move a cursor around to pick your pitch placement. Once you've done that, hitting the 5 key causes your pitcher to wind up, and a power meter appears. Letting go of 5 releases the pitch. On the batting side, you've got a large box that you can move around the strike zone, and the 5 key swings the bat while the 7 key bunts. Better batters have larger boxes, but since the pitch comes in so slowly, getting the cursor right on (or under, to give the hit some life) the pitch is a breeze.

Hopefully the game speed is one of the many things still being worked on in MLB Slam!, because it's currently a very sluggish game. The pitches come in at an extremely slow speed, which, combined with the easy-to-read pitching and batting cursor design, makes hitting the ball a snap. Once in the field, the game speed isn't quite as bad, but it's still noticeably slower than what you'd expect from a baseball game. But again, the game isn't finished--the version we've seen lacks sound and has a handful of features grayed out.

If these speed issues are worked out before its release, MLB Slam! should be a reasonably solid first entry into the baseball genre for Nokia's new system. Look for MLB Slam! to hit stores in early October.