Batter Up! by Fox Sports pares the proud sport of baseball down to its most primordial, entertaining level--having somebody pitch you moonballs in the backyard so you can rip one dinger after another. Sorrent's Fox Sports titles have had something of a history of sacrificing playability for inordinate levels of graphical polish, but Batter Up! hits the sweet spot between substantive gameplay, home run derby frivolity, and slick presentation with a full swing.
Batter Up! lets you choose one of four batters--each of whom has different power and accuracy stats to his swing--and start blasting away at an assortment of pitchers. There are three different levels to work your way through: the minors, the majors, and the rather difficult all-star level, which seems to be staffed with tricky changeup artists. You get 10 pitches on each level to do your dirty work, earning increasing amounts of points as you travel up the hit gradient from single to out-of-the-park meteor ball. If you whiff three consecutive times, you're done. That's all there is to it. If you're looking for a realistic baseball simulation that features fielding, throwing, innings, and tobacco-spitting managers, this isn't it.
That said, you may not find yourself missing these traditional baseball elements much, as Batter Up! packs some of the best batting mechanics on cell phones. The game concentrates on only this single aspect of baseball, so the swinging process is far more nuanced and interesting than it is in similar titles. The strike zone is subdivided into nine areas, each of which corresponds to the appropriate number key on the handset. As the ball loops toward the plate from an umpire's perspective, two white ball outlines converge on a particular segment of the strike zone. If you can hit the correct number key just as the two outlines recombine into a red icon, you've successfully brought the wood and have a great chance for a homer. There's also a power meter that fills up the longer you hold the requisite button down: Charging up the meter infuses the swing with added oomph, increasing hit distance.
Developing a feel for the interplay between timing, aim, and power is a pretty gradual and surprisingly compelling process. It's possible to hit reasonably well without paying any attention to swing power or aim (you can still hit pitches using any key, regardless of location), but homers will come more readily if you learn to anticipate where a ball is headed and charge up the correct key. Sorrent could have differentiated between the four batters more than it did; they are pretty similar despite their different stats, although the two guys at either end of the power/accuracy continuum play a little differently. More variety in the pitching styles would have also been an improvement. As is, they mix it up adequately between fast, slow, straight, and curve, but they don't really do anything that surprising.
The graphics in Batter Up! are great, and, more importantly, they don't distract from or slow down the core gameplay. The digitized rendering--long a Sorrent calling card--works great in this situation, because the graphics are generally pretty static, requiring little animation. We especially appreciate the ingenious out-of-the-park homer sequences, which depict the ball breaking the stadium lights and smashing car windshields in the parking lot. However, pitches are more difficult to track than they need to be, due to the somewhat confusing cursors impinging on the ball's path. There isn't much in the way of sound other than the quick Fox Sports theme at the title screen and a quiet crack when you hit the ball.
Sorrent made the right game design choices for Batter Up! Instead of trying to surface last-generation gameplay with next-generation graphics, it has gone with gameplay first and has streamlined the best part of baseball into a facile, entertaining contest. Overall, Batter Up! is the best Fox Sports title to hit handsets in a long while.
