Triple Play 2002

For a console is its early stages of existence, the Xbox already has a wide array of sports games. But one sport that has yet to be represented on the platform is baseball. Fortunately, EA Sports is stepping up to the plate to deliver the next installment in its annual hardball franchise, Triple Play 2002. Last year's game on the PlayStation 2 met with mixed reactions. Critics bemoaned its home-run-happy gameplay, but fans enjoyed the high-scoring games and constant action. EA Sports has decided not to mess with the formula too much, instead attempting to polish the existing game mechanics and visuals.

Smacking the ball out of the park.

Not much has changed as far as gameplay modes are concerned when comparing Triple Play 2002 with last year's game. The lone addition is the home-run derby, where you and seven of your friends can try to drive as many balls as possible over the fence before getting 10 outs. Once again, there is no franchise mode included, but you can play seasons of 15, 30, 60, or 162 games. Statistics are tracked in nine categories for pitchers and 31 categories for most other players. Human players can control all 30 MLB teams in the season mode, so if you have a large group of friends, they can all get in on the action. And if you're unhappy with the current rosters in Major League Baseball, you can completely redraft the league to your liking. You may play the season mode on three difficulty settings, but if you want an authentic experience with fewer than 10 runs per game, you'll have to play on the all-star setting. You can tweak the season settings to change the number of innings per game and whether there will be errors in the games. In addition to the home-run derby and season modes, you can also play head-to-head against one other person or go straight to the playoffs and play as many games per series as you like.

Coming up to bat.

Playing Triple Play 2002 is not unlike playing past games in the series. The pitcher-batter interface has been slightly reworked to make it easier and shorten the length of each game. Pitching is now accomplished with the press of a single button. First, you choose the location of the pitch with the analog stick, and you then press the button that corresponds to the type of pitch you'd like to hurl. Batting is just as easy--you simply line up the batting cursor with the pitching cursor and time the swing. Batting cursors are sized based on a hitter's ability, so Frank Thomas has an enormous cursor that almost fills the entire strike zone, while pitchers like Curt Schilling have batting cursors only slightly larger than the baseball. EA Sports hopes that the alterations to the pitching interface will decrease the time it takes to complete a game by 33 percent, but the biggest improvement to the gameplay this time around is the replay buffer. After hitting the ball, the camera will switch to a fielding view where the ball will be shown being hit once again. This gives the fielder more time to prepare for the jump of the ball off the bat and eliminates the awkward camera transitions that cause missed ground balls in other baseball games. The feature works well, though in this current build, the hit will sometimes be shown several times, which can make it a bit difficult. This should be fixed for the final version of the game. The AI for computer pitchers has also been adjusted so that there is some logic to their pitch selection. In last year's game, the pitchers randomly chose their pitches, so you'd sometimes see them lead off with a change-up. In Triple Play 2002, the pitchers will set you up with a slider, blow it past you with a fastball, and then finish you off with an elbow-breaking change-up.