Despite those concerns, you won't find a more authentic baseball game anywhere. The batting and pitching interfaces don't let you pinpoint your aim with cursors. Instead, you aim in a general direction and take your chances. In this fashion, pitcher fatigue and timing are the main factors that influence your pitching and hitting abilities. CPU opponents are intelligent enough to exploit lefty-vs.-righty matchups and to use the double-switch in close games. You'll also see plays that hardly ever happen in other baseball games, such as dropped third strikes and appeals down to the line umpires.

3DO also added a bunch of new features to the 2004 installment. There are roughly 30 pitch types to choose from, as opposed to the dozen or so that were available in the previous game. Players like Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, and Orlando Hernandez all exhibit their unique variations of traditional pitches. The franchise mode now includes three levels of minor-league teams, so you can promote and demote players just like a real general manager. One of the biggest new additions is the tuning menu, which allows you to adjust 20 different gameplay sliders in order to tailor the play balance to your liking.

Bottom Line:
The interface is counterintuitive, but High Heat Major League Baseball 2004 is still the game to get if you want to feel like you're actually on the field playing the game.

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