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Hardball Hoedown
These big hitters will turn your couch into a dugout and your living room into a…well, your living room is still a garbage heap. (These games aren’t miracle workers!)
Stuff,
4/20/2004
By Seth Kelly
Strap on your virtual spikes with any one of this year’s starting rotation of baseball sims. You don’t have to worry about fines for bad-mouthing officials, rising ticket prices or having even a vestigial amount of athletic ability—but you will need thumbs.
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MLB Slugfest Loaded
Midway; PS2, Xbox
Slugfest Loaded expectorates a viscous, brown gob at both the rules and general physics of baseball. Players “heat up” and literally catch on fire during the game, allowing them to throw frozen ropes from the outfield and launch home runs into the next zip code. Perfect for the bit of Pedro in all of us, the beanball option lets you go headhunting from the mound. Extremism adds flair to any normally boring situation—which is exactly the reason we practice full-contact confession at church—but purists may pooh-pooh the over-the-top trappings. For the casual baseball fan, however, Slugfest Loaded provides a fresh look at hardball.
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All-Star Baseball 2005
Midway; PS2, Xbox
Much like unwanted interaction with the police, you can make your time at the plate in All-Star as easy or hard on yourself as you like. Four separate hitting modes: timing, zone, 2-D cursor and 3-D cursor vary in difficulty. Timing, the easiest, works just like it sounds. Just sit back, watch the ball and try not to succumb to the ensuing boredom. The 2-D and 3-D hitting options grow increasingly hard but mastering them rewards you with the chance to turn normally weak hitters into slugging machines. The more difficult hitting modes allow you to anticipate pitch speed and placement as well as hit for opposite fields. All-Star even presents a way to enrich your cultural life while playing a video game. Switching the commentary option from Steve “Psycho” Lyons and Tom Brennaman to the Spanish broadcast simulation provided by the voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks Oscar Soria and—boom!—you’re not listening to Tom Brennaman anymore. We feel enriched, don’t you?
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ESPN Major League Baseball
Sega; PS2, Xbox
The quirky use of self-esteem sets ESPN Baseball apart from the rest of the crew. Everyone from second-string utility men to the aces on your pitching roster has his own confidence meter that indicates he’s feeling about himself. Now, you could try to build up your players by making unbelievable stabs at grounders and chipping singles through the gap, but we recommend a more militant approach of grinding them down with intentional errors and then building them back up in your own image. Tough love! The game also lets you decide exactly how much heat you want to put on every pitch. Increasing the heat sacrifices some accuracy, but it’s nothing you shouldn’t be able to blame on your catcher. Karl Ravech and Jon Miller serve as resident talking heads, but sadly there are no clips from the ESPN’s TV ad campaign. There’s just something about seeing Harold Reynolds in a wig…What? Did we share too much?
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MLB 2005
989 Sports; PS2
Last year’s bridesmaid of baseball franchises makes a move for the pennant with its latest installment. All-around improvements such as the increase in multiplayer modes and the decrease in dingers (you can no longer jack 20 home runs a game) have made MLB 2005 a solid title. Casual baseball fans who don’t need to exercise an obsessive-compulsive level of control over their players will dig the laid-back interface. You don’t have to break your thumbs trying to pull off a hook slide instead of a face-first dive coming into home plate, since the computer decides for you. Finally, the more you play, the more reward points you earn, which allows you access to functions like legendary players, throwback uniforms and cheats. Congratulations, rat boy, your PS2 has become your very own Skinner box!
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MVP Baseball 2004
EA Sports; GameCube, PS2, Xbox
One of the strongest all-around titles this season, MVP 2004 covers every level of baseball, from the big league to the lowliest double- and triple-A farm teams. You can actually taste the shattered dreams of players who get let go from the Toledo Mud Hens. (They taste like cotton candy. Very sad cotton candy.) The Pure Swing System lets you swing for opposite fields or pop up a sac fly. Big Play control lets you call upon your players for whole new levels of self-sacrifice by running up the outfield wall to save home runs, breaking up double plays and playing chicken with catchers guarding the plate. They never move! The Dynasty Mode lets you eschew the field in favor of managing all aspects of your team in the hopes of building a juggernaut through developing a strong farm system and managing the overall chemistry of your team. We prefer a mixture of motivational posters from airplane catalogs and the liberal use of threats. |
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