All-Star Baseball 2004 has more teams, modes, and bonuses than you can shake a stick at. A very large stick, one that has smaller sticks growing out of it. 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 all playing in the prime of their careers. Acclaim scored the blessing of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City 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 own a PlayStation 2 broadband adapter, you can go online and download roster updates--which are made available at the beginning of every month.

Visually, All-Star Baseball 2004 has sharp graphics and exhibits a good amount of detail. 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. 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, players are introduced using music clips that are easily recognized. Notable 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." The play-by-play commentary contributed by Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons is also really smooth, especially when Thom and Steve interrupt one another and continue on without skipping a beat.

Bottom Line:
Some of the action on the field feels contrived, but All-Star Baseball 2004 offers everything you could ever want in a baseball game. Literally.

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