A most highly upsetting experience
There may be some positive aspects to the game, but the negatives far outweigh them. For starters, the game really seems to work against you while on defense. Fielders only move when you move them. This is usually ok, but when there is a bloop hit down the line and the shortstop is giving chase, but can’t quite make it there, you then have to hit the L1 button and switch to the Left Fielder and make him run up and get it. The only real problem is he didn’t move at all while the ball was in the air. What should have been a little fly ball dumped into shallow left field for a single turns into a double. And while on the topic of outfielders, lets talk about controlling them, seeing as you’ll be doing a lot of that. Basically, these guys act like they weigh about 500 pounds. They don’t like to run fast, but once they get moving at all, forget about changing direction. It would seem that this was at least noticed by the developers as they seem to catch most anything around them (usually bending over and picking it off just before it hits the ground). It should also be mentioned that bending over to pick up the ball is seen a lot in the game on other plays as well. On more then one occasion, I needed an infielder to run up and make a quick pick up and throw to first (because it would seem that everyone in the majors is now as fast as Juan Pierre). Instead of charging the ball and making the quick play, the fielder would stop, hold for a second, bend down and pick up the ball and then make the through. While playing online my brother was able to run half way to second as my Third Baseman pulled this maneuver.
While these are some of my complaints about the game, and they are seen enough for me to notice them and be annoyed by them, they aren’t happening every play. Though there are some more game play issues I have, i.e. random throwing of the ball to nobody, the balls ability to roll forever as if on a hard wood floor, fielders inability to tag base runners, and the base running controls, my other complaints lye within it’s rosters and graphics. This game looks terrible. I’m not saying it is PSone bad or anything, but this is what I would have expected a first generation PS2 title to look like. Colors are way too bright, stadiums look hacked together. The player models are very generic save for some of the big name stars. It just doesn’t look good at all. And while the roster players may all look bad and rather similar, there aren’t that many of them to worry about. Being a New York Mets fan I loaded up a game with the Mets and got ready to set my lineup. While most of the new Mets additions from the off season were there, some were not. “No problem” I figured, “I’ll just download the new online roster”. I did, with no trouble, only to find I could figure out a way to get it into the offline games. I’ll admit, I didn’t look into this that long as I just wanted to try the game out (I can make up players later on myself if need be), but I could not figure out how to get that roster into a season mode. This leads to the next issue in the game. Were I to play a season with the Mets, I’d be doing it with my starting fielders, a backup First Baseman, a backup Shortstop, and a Backup Outfielder, and a load of Pitchers. So basically, if any of my guys go down, I’m then in a spot with no backup players to use. How this was overlooked I don’t know, but I checked a couple other teams and it wasn’t just the Mets. The Cubs had about 12 pitchers and two backup fielders (just an estimation, I don’t have the exact numbers right in front of me at the moment). Hopefully I am wrong and there is a way to get the updated rosters into the offline game modes, though I didn’t see many more players in those rosters either.
Despite all my complaining so far, I don’t want you to think there is no good aspect to the game. The Inside Edge system is pretty cool. Helping you pick the right pitches to throw and defensive alignments to use. Though I’m still not entirely used to it, the swing mechanic is pretty interesting as well. It will take some getting used to, but I think it will be quite usable once you’ve played a few games. It should be mentioned that while trying to play online, just the slightest bit of lag seemed to throw the swings way off. The game tries to help you by telling you if you are pulling back on the stick (taking your stride of your swing) too soon or too late, and also telling you if you swung too early or too late. I just found myself getting annoyed by the game telling me I could not time the thing right. Not to mention that every time I had a perfectly timed step, or so the game told me, my swing was late. I didn’t run into this nearly as much offline as I did online. Another thing I do like about the game is that online you can set your lineup and your starting pitcher, something the baseball game I had played before lacked. So as you can see my list of negatives far outweighs my positives. I’m not trying to say the game is just so bad that it shouldn’t be tried out by anybody, but I firmly believe it’s a rental over a buy. Who knows, like a lot of game, once you get used to the intricacies of how it plays it becomes more enjoyable, and I hope that is the case with this game, because it’s one of the few official MLB game franchises we’ll have for a while. But for now, I say “Strike one”.