The game includes all 30 official MLB teams and stadiums, as well as 24 bonus teams, 44 vintage and custom stadiums, and more than 110 legendary players drawn from the last 100 years of baseball history. The Yankees Legends team has Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle playing in the prime of their careers. Acclaim also scored the blessing of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City in order to include a Negro Leagues Legends team, which features players like Pop Lloyd, Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Buck O'Neil. Teams representing the prewar era, dead-ball era, and the MLB All-Century squad are also available.

All of the standard play modes are present, such as exhibition games, season play, a franchise mode, home-run derby, and batting practice. There are bonus play modes as well, including a trivia game, a pickup game option that's reminiscent of Field of Dreams, and a scenario mode where you try to alter the outcome of 30 key situations taken from the 2002 season. For every game you play, you earn points that you can use to purchase player cards that help you unlock goodies such as additional teams, vintage uniforms, video clips, and cheat codes. If you subscribe to the Xbox Live service, you also have the option to go online and download roster updates, which are made available at the beginning of every month.

Even though All-Star Baseball 2004 on the Xbox is pretty much identical to its counterparts on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, you'd be hard pressed to point out any one area where the game fails to look as good as and sound as good as games that specifically take advantage of the Xbox hardware. All of the stadiums are identical to their real-world counterparts, and the digital displays within each park update to reflect the current line score and scores from around the league and to show glamour photos of the players. The overall look is extremely sharp, so you won't notice things like jagged baselines or illegible signs. Acclaim used a facial modeling system to re-create the faces of the players from actual photographs, and the majority of players go through the same warm-up routines as they do on TV. For the audio, Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons contribute a running play-by-play that's full of variety, and the music clips that are used for player introductions are both appropriate and recognizable. Some of the more familiar clips include House of Pain's "Jump Around," L.L. Cool J's "Mamma Said Knock You Out," and Tim McGraw's "I Like it, I Love it."

Bottom Line:
All-Star Baseball 2004 has everything you could want in a baseball game. Literally.

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