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Average Overall Score Given: 6.00000 / 10
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Reviews
World Series Baseball (Sega)
Overall: Overall, this game is not one that commands replayability. Too many things need to be changed or fixed. And, this is coming from one who has played sports games since the 1980's. Player movements overall tend to be very robotic looking, even stupid looking at times. Who the hell has ever seen an outfielder catch all balls while squatting and facing the outfield wall? I can't believe the developers didn't notice this kind of thing :( The batting/pitching interface is horrible. Really, I've played many games over the years and I think the best kind of interface is one that doesn't have one. By this, I mean there shouldn't be a batting cursor on the medium level of difficulty (Pro). Hell, if you're going to do something like this, have the pitcher make adjustments to the pitch while in the act of pitching! When the ball is hit, either the camera angles are off, or the developers are hiding something from us. And, replays? Show use the flight of the ball, not just the player's face! Who wants to follow up a highlight moment (such as a homerun) with a replay that shows only the hitter making contact with the ball? Replays of grounders and double plays are horrendous. They only show part of the play. The parks look entirely too small, the commentary is awful. "And, he hits a long drive to the right side of the field, but foul". Problem with that comment is that the ball looks like it didn't get past the crowd near the first base bag. I have not seen ONE injury, not one error...in three games. Come on, in three games that any team plays in the major leagues, there will be at least one of these events occuring!
I have yet to play All Star Baseball 2003, and judging from how bad the reviews I read of that game were, and how great they were for WSB, I might just end up purchasing ASB2K3, and NOT purchasing WSB. Amazing how biased and uninformed reviews can be. By the way, this is the first review I have ever written, and the only reason I am doing it this time around is that I feel I have the gaming experience to justify doing so. Try the other games before you think about buying World Series Baseball, that is the least I can recommend to any serious baseball junkie out there.
Gameplay: I read a lot of reviews this past month or so about this game, and was drooling over how great this game was going to be. Boy, do I feel like a fool! It was all hype! High Heat Baseball 2001 on PC is far more fun than this game. I'll even go out on a limb and say that Bases Loaded II had more appeal to me in the days of my Super Ninetendo gaming. The camera angles and pitching/batter interface need to be drastically worked on. There needs to be a feature built in, where you have to warm up your pitchers before using them. That's realism, otherwise perhaps WSB is headed the direction of Triple Play by EA. Homeruns need to bounce off the upperdeck or buildings outside the stadium. Why have these things not yet been put in a game?
Graphics: If you can overlook the annoyances, such as how players look they're squatting when standing on the base, and how they seem to stick in this position while rotating around to catch the ball, the game looks pretty nice.
Probably the two greatest visual-type moments that occur in the game, and I think this is an indicator of this game not being so great, are:
(a) the batter walk-ups and when they are leaving the plate are really cool and get my blood boiling.
(b) when the fielder fields a ground ball while running, and makes a snap throw to second or first (where you will see most of these types of throws), it looks rather realistic!
Audio: Honestly, I don't pay a lot of attention to sounds, since I think that with a game like baseball, realism ON the field is far more important than some bird chirping in the background, a plane flying by, or some heckler giving you a dose of "you suck" type comments. I have noticed some humming coming from the XBox, this does get in the way slightly. It could just be my XBox unit, or a widely-heard complaint.
Suggestions: (a) incorporate collision-detection between the ball and the upper-deck or buildings outside the stadium. The ball just disappearing to nowhere doesn't make sense.
(b) player animations look goofy at times. I couldn't figure out how to make the fielders dive. This should be intuitive. Outfielders seem to run toward the wall to catch a fly ball, never looking over their shoulders. Then, they just stand there, squatting forward and catch the ball that way. It all looks very robotic, not human-like at all.
(c) I think you could borrow the batting/pitcher interface that High Heat Baseball on PC provides. The pitches just seem to disappear to nowhere.
(d) The ball looks too fat, and collision detection between the ball and the bat is horrible. At times, it looks like the bat is making contact with a ball that isn't anywhere close to being hittable. Curveballs don't seem to have enough movement, I have yet to see a pitcher that throws a sinker
(e) why not have the player manage pitchers the way they should be managed, like warming them up? Just putting pitchers that are immediately fresh into the game really cuts out the realism, especially for one that has played sports games since they came into existance.
(f) replays are horrible, at least show the part of the replay that everyone wants to see. How many times do I have to look at a batter smack a homerun, only to see automatic replya only show him making contact with the ball? Funny, how I did manage to get the replay to show where the ball was going, but the ball just sorta' disappeared when the meeting that invisible vertical wall that exists above the outfield wall. Perhaps the developers didn't want this to be shown in the automatic replays.
(g) where are the injuries? The walks to the mound? The calling of time by the batter? The batboys? Objects being thrown on the field? Insects or animals landing on the playing field or swarming around the players? Perhaps that last wish is too much for players that aren't die hard baseball fans :) What about errors? I've played three games, and have yet to see an error on Pro level. There are moments when I feel this game could be great, others when I wonder whether all the automatic replays and blurry animations hide the fact that maybe there isn't much in the way of realism with this game. Here's hoping that the next version is better, and thanking myself for not having purchased this one.
Overall Score: 6.0 / 10
