High Heat Major League Baseball 2003 Review

High Heat Major League Baseball 2003 is an afterthought. Four years after the start of a brilliant run that led to the creation of what many would call the best arcade baseball series of all time, developer/publisher 3DO is now dealing in recycled goods. The carelessness that saw the company never properly patch last year's edition has carried over into a new game that in fact isn't new. High Heat 2003 is nearly a carbon copy of High Heat 2002 in the way it looks and plays, and its only serious addition to the series is an array of bugs. Although the fundamentals of the gameplay are still sound, so much of the total package is shoddy that the game isn't a good option for either newcomers to the series or returning customers looking to upgrade last year's model.

Graphics like this are inexcusable in 2002.

Speaking of last year's model, if you're familiar with the previous release in the High Heat series, you're already acquainted with the appearance of this year's edition. Everything is almost exactly the same as it was last year, when 3DO completed a long overdue face-lift. Unfortunately, even then the graphics were at least two years behind the gold standard set by EA Sports. Such an extremely dated look wouldn't be quite so bad if 3DO had at least ensured that we received good-looking 1999 visuals. But that isn't the case here. Certain aspects of the game can only be seen as second-rate, no matter how forgiving you are in regard to the calendar. There is still no collision detection, meaning that players have the uncanny ability to pass through one another (now that's how to avoid a tag). The animation is still clunky, particularly with the movement of fielders and catchers. Blocky buildings, blurry signs, and unbelievably pixelated scoreboards continue to make the stadiums seem unfinished. Player models are a touch above their surroundings, though a number of faces haven't been mapped properly. The features of many players are scrunched into a "lemon sucking" grimace that's either hideous or hilarious depending on your mood.

The game's other graphical elements are equally discouraging. 3DO has dropped the intro cinematic and performed a perfunctory renovation of the menu screens. Game functions are handled using the same old quasi-Windows interface, although a few things have been moved around, colors have been changed, and player models can now be seen on loading screens. Also new is a display bug that garbles player photos and the line art illustrations of ballparks in the menu screens (in-game player photos look fine). Experimenting with multiple driver versions for our GeForce3 Ti 500 did nothing to alleviate the issue, which appears to be widespread according to recent newsgroup and message board posts.

Painting the corners.

The audio is even more bug-riddled. Users have been reporting serious issues with Creative's popular Live! and Audigy lines. This was in evidence with our Live! Value, which exhibits pops and hisses from the right channel, occasional complete dropouts by the crowd, skipping that makes the national anthem sound like it's being fast-forwarded, and repeated lines from the commentators. Most annoying of all is a tendency for crowd noise to pan from one speaker to the other during games, a disorienting quirk that forced us to switch off this sound effect. We also shut off play-by-play man Dave O'Brien and new color commentator Chuck Valenches because of loud hissing that accompanied each line they spoke. This was done regretfully because both add more to the game this year in terms of situation-specific lines. Hearing O'Brien make comments like, "Let's see if he can hit his second jack in this AB," made the entire broadcast presentation seem more natural.