Next to
High Heat, this is probably the most realistic baseball experience available on the market. So you’ll probably understand why I was a little disappointed to find that Mike Piazza just simply took his base after I beaned him with a Guillermo Mota fast ball. Not exactly a bench clearing fi- well there aren’t exactly fights in baseball, bench clearing shouting match? Oh well, there’s always next year’s edition.
The game plays very realistically, perhaps a bit
too realistically. This is most prevalent in the batter/pitcher interface which will most likely be the focus of most players’ complaints. For one you have very little time between the actual delivery of the pitch and the time it takes to cross the plate to react to it. This makes batting a very difficult exercise for some, especially those who are trying to pick up and play the game for some casual fun. Personally I had little problems with the interface and found it to actually be quite intuitive. You can orient the direction that you want to hit the ball before the pitch arrives so that you have a decent idea of where you’re hitting it. You can guess the pitch type as well as the location of the pitch in order to increase the chances of a solid hit. New to this year’s hitting interface is the bunting mechanism which lets you perform drag bunts and such.
Anyman who can throw a no-hitter with a hangover is a hero to us err-, we mean don't do drink and stay in school!All of the same features in last year’s game are present as well. Like I said in my review of
ASB2003, it’s very akin to a Fox Sports telecast. You can check the hot-cold charts for each batter and even check out the pitch locations and the result of each pitch in the last at bat. For the pitcher this adds a significant strategic advantage as they can know where to throw in order to avoid hurling a ball into a slugger’s wheelhouse.
Like last year’s game each pitcher can have up to five different pitches. Most of the pitches seem to reflect the real life player; Randy Johnson has a dominating fastball while Kevin Brown has a nasty split finger. I’m still a little peeved that Kaz Ishii doesn’t have the dominating curveball that’s in all of the Major League scouting reports. There are a few very troubling problems with the pitching in the game, however, but I’ll leave those gripes for later.
Fielding is pretty simple and is definitely one of the best that the genre has to offer. The ball comes off of the bat with enough speed to give a sense of reality, but slow enough to allow the gamer to react. Other genres (read: Triple Play) had a hard time finding the right amount of ball speed to field size ratio to allow for a fun and engaging experience. While at times the field does seem a bit too large for the players, the ball speed and movement helps compensate for this.
A nice addition to this year’s edition comes on the fly ball indicator. When a fly ball is hit a marker appears on the field to give you an idea of where to stand to catch the ball. While most games have this,
ASB2004 is the first that I’ve seen which has an arrow that points to the direction of where your field is currently standing. This helps clear up some confusion as to which fielder you are currently controlling so that you don’t accidentally run the center fielder into left field when you think that you’re controlling the right fielder
I was impressed by some of the new on-field animations, especially the ones that help give a deeper sense of realism to the game. Scorching grounders hit to the 3rd basemen aren’t handled in the routine fielding position but instead, you’ll see the fielder reach behind him and pull the glove up, as to give the impression that he’s fielding a hard hit grounder. Likewise, there are a good variety of catch animations to correspond to the current situation. Although the game still has a tendency of turning routine catches into potential Web Gems, such instances have been toned down immensely.
If you’re not familiar with the franchise you’ll be in for one hell of a shock. A nine-inning game can take anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes to complete, depending on how strategic and tactical the game gets. The game trudges along at a snail-like pace that rivals that of a real Major League game. If you plan on picking this game up just keep in mind that it’s not your average pick up and play game.
Strangely enough the game seems to have taken a hit in the graphics department. Last year’s game wasn’t a graphical showcase but was good enough to hold its own against the likes of
World Series and
Triple Play. This year’s game actually seems to have been downgraded from last year’s game. The parks as well as the player models look absolutely dated. Textures look rather muddled and the game just isn’t as attractive as it once was. Even the crowd, which features similar FMV standouts, doesn’t look as good anymore. To contrast this the animations are still as smooth and fluid as ever. I just wish that there was more refinement in the player’s faces and uniforms.
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