ESPN Major League Baseball Preview

Sega's sports lineup has been positively evolving for the past few years as developer Visual Concepts has worked to find its groove. The Northern California-based developer has been garnering critical acclaim for its sports titles since it first vaulted into the gaming limelight with its impressive offerings on the Dreamcast. The latest and arguably most focused evolution of VC's sports games has come about thanks to the acquisition of the ESPN license, which has recently become the new brand. This year's edition of VC's baseball franchise, ESPN Major League Baseball, features a number of improvements over last year's game, including online multiplayer support. This year's installment in the series is once again the result of a joint development effort between Visual Concepts and developer Blue Shift. The collaboration between the two companies has taken the series in a positive direction and has also managed to make it a legitimate contender in the genre. We recently had the chance to take an exclusive look at the upcoming game, which is slated to hit the PlayStation 2 and Xbox next month.

ESPN Major League Baseball features a whopping eight game modes you can play.

You'll find that the basic assortment of modes in this year's game is joined by some impressive new additions that should definitely please sports fans. Quick game lets you immediately jump into a contest. The innocuous "game modes" option is the heart of the game, and it features eight different types of games from which you can choose, including GM career, franchise, season, playoffs, exhibition, gamecast, duel, and situation. GM career is a new franchise-style mode that lets you play the general manager of a team as you make key trades, pick up needed players, and make vital organization decisions while trying to keep your owner happy so that you can keep your job. Each team has an owner who has a different personality archetype (for example, there's the maverick, the dictator, the fan, and more), and each owner has a different focus for team development (for instance, one may want to improve the team, one may want to make money, one may want to win, etc.).

Your owner will give you goals at the start of the season that you'll have to work toward, and during the actual season, he'll give you additional goals. For example, if you're the LA Dodger's GM and a four game series with the SF Giants is coming up, your owner might give you a goal to win the upcoming series with the Giants. Unlike the game's normal franchise mode, which offers unlimited play, the GM career mode is only 30 years in length. This adds a different level of urgency to the gameplay.

The game's revamped pitching system offers 17 new pitches, seven of which are new.

The gamecast feature offers some pretty neat elements that help suit your experience to the game. Specifically, gamecast lets you simulate a game, which is presented to you as if you're watching the game on ESPN.com. While this isn't anything too special, the cool twist comes in the option to hop in and take direct control of a game at anytime. This feature works in both franchise and GM career modes. The duel is another new mode that offers a fast-paced in-game-style experience. You'll pick a batter and a pitcher to go up against another batter and pitcher. You'll play one inning with five outs--and an out can be made by getting a strike against a batter, forcing the batter to hit a foul or get an infield hit, or having the pitcher catch a pop fly. Remember, there are no fielders in the game; there's only a pitcher and a batter. The pitcher scores points by striking out the batter, and the batter scores points by hitting balls in to the outfield--and the further you hit the ball, the more points you get.

The coolest new addition to the whole package is the first-person baseball mode. Hot on the heels of this slick feature's inclusion in ESPN NFL Football, VC and Blue Shift have opted to work some first-person magic into ESPN Major League Baseball. The game will feature two modes of first-person baseball--first-person and action cam. First-person is truly what you'd expect it to be, so you'll engage in everything from pitching and batting to fielding and baserunning all from a first-person perspective. Action cam is a unique combination of both the first-person perspective and an over-the-shoulder third-person perspective. The online multiplayer component of the game will support the PlayStation 2 network adapter and Xbox Live, both of which are welcome firsts for the series.