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I didn't expect any baseball games to be out for the coming season yet, but since I'm the type who buys all of them every year, I had to pick it up. It used to be that games were released around Opening Day, ostensibly to be as up-to-date as possible. So seeing one in early March was surprising, but not unwelcome.
Having played All-Star Baseball 2003, I think Acclaim should have waited a while on this one.
Graphically, the game looks good, with lifelike player models and motion-captured animations. The signature batting stances and pitching motions are well-rendered, too. Stadiums look very much like their real counterparts, with the backgrounds and skylines reproduced faithfully, as well. The sounds are good but not intrusive; even the announcing -- an annoying "feature" in a lot of games -- is far from bothersome, though it suffers from the common problem of falling behind the action at times.
The game plays fairly well, with easy pitching and batting controls. The only game that's ever had an actively bad batting interface was the dreadful World Series Baseball 2K1 for the Dreamcast, so anything else is immediately better. The batting interface in ASB 2003 is very versatile, allowing you to take any kind of swing and hit the ball anywhere you want. There's a learning curve involved with actually hitting the pitches (or maybe it's just my layoff from baseball games), but that's to be expected.
The problem is, all of this was in the 2002 game. A new Expansion mode was added, allowing you to start an expansion team (complete with the obligatory draft of retreads and castoffs) and develop it over the course of many seasons. Other than that, this is the same game that shipped last year; no other meaningful new features were added. Baseball is a static game, and one of the ways for games to remain fresh is to add new features and game modes each year. ASB 2003 hasn't done that. The Hardball series died to a lack of innovation, and Acclaim needs to learn their lessons in that respect.
Expansion, franchise, and season modes all allow for extensive team management. The interface is cumbersome, with the irregular button assignment of Circle taking you back a screen (as opposed to Triangle, which is virtually universal in that function in menus). Once you get used to that, though, it's pretty easy to get around in. From the team management screen, you can really play the role of GM: make trades, sign free agents, move players onto and off the disabled list, and make farm team transactions. The Create Player feature works well, allowing you to rate players in various categories, using the game's letter grade system (A+ down to D-). Once created, players can be added to a team like any other free agent.
This game has some serious flaws, though, so let's break it down:
The Good:
The presentation of the game is solid. Graphics are smooth and crisp, animations are realistic, and the sounds are well-done while being unobtrusive.
Roster management, while a bit cumbersome at first, allows you an anal-retentive level of control over your major-league roster and farm team.
The batting interface is very versatile. Want to try to take a defensive swing and hit a grounder the other way? You can. Want to try to pull a fly ball into the cheap seats late in the game? You can do that, too. You can try to set up any kind of hit you think you need or want. The execution is still up to you, but the game at least gives you the chance.
The Bad:
Some things are so godawful, they get tossed right into the next section.
The Ugly:
This was a problem in the 2002 game that wasn't fixed: you can make really stupid, one-sided trades. Sorry, but Gregg Olson isn't nearly as good as Pedro Martinez. That's a trade you can make, though. If more than one person plays a season or franchise, ridiculous trades are allowed. Nothing stops you from assembling an all-star team by trading away a bunch of scrubs. It's just plain retarded. Sports games brag about their "realistic AI" and "coaching strategies;" what about some common sense in the front office? Is that so bloody hard to program in? Trades should be impossible if the players are a certain measure apart in overall rating. My roommate and I had to cap the number of farcical trades we could make, eventually instituting a rule that the players involved could be no more than one letter grade apart. I doubt everyone who plays the game is so responsible.
As for one-player seasons, it doesn't let you make the stupid trades. At least, not in one transaction. You can work your way up the ladder, trading a C- player for a C, that C for a B-, the B- for a B, the B for a B+, etc etc. Going from B+ to A- is the toughest gap to bridge, but I've done it numerous times. Again, this is a dreadful oversight. There's no fun in running a team if you can have Murderer's Row II on the field within an hour. I was hoping Acclaim learned their lesson from the first game, but either they didn't notice or not enough people complained. Or not enough people bought the game to complain.
Another gripe about franchise/expansion play (yes, I have a few of them, since franchise management is an aspect of sports games that appeals greatly to me): there's a salary cap. They don't come right out and call it that (hiding behind the nebulous "franchise value" label instead), but that's what it is. From what I've gathered, the cap is 540 units. If you have six free agents to sign, but only 80 units to spend, you have a problem. There's no salary cap in baseball, so why put one in a game whose front-office simulation sucks to being with? Talk about piling on. I'm sure it's there to prevent someone from signing all the big-name free agents every offseason, but nothing stops a real major-league team from doing that. Why should something stop me in a bad sim?
Oh, if you weren't able to sign all your free agents during the offseason, don't worry: you can sign players once the season starts. Every season, I've seen players rated at least B- in the free agent pool to start the season. Just swap them for the scrubs you had to call up from your farm team, and voila! You're a contender again. At least the game mirrors real baseball in that its fiscal restrictions are limp-wristed and easy to circumvent. There are some things I don't want in a sim, though.
Basically, running a franchise in ASB 2003 is an offense to the intellect of anyone who evolved after the Cro-Magnon era. You can voluntarily limit the senseless moves the game will allow you to make, but then you're using artificial restriction to have fun playing a game. That's more trouble than it's worth.
Doing The Math:
Remember how I said at the beginning that I was surprised to see All-Star Baseball 2003 on the shelves? I was wondering if it had been rushed out, and after playing it, I'm convinced that it was. Acclaim should have waited until they'd made a better, more intelligent game. Speaking of waiting, that's just what you should do: Triple Play and High Heat will be out soon enough. Take an intentional pass on this one. 3/10.
7 March 2002