OT - All-Star Baseball 2005

[Cuckoo]

I just read that the PS2 version has finally shipped. Has anyone played it yet? Last year's gameplay left a lot to be desired, but the franchise mode was really deep. I'm curious to know if there have been any major improvements.

Thus far, I've rented MVP and MLB 2005. I'll rent All-Star and ESPN when it comes out before I decide which one to buy. MLB is definitely not going to be the one I choose, but MVP is solid and may be, depending on All-Star and ESPN.

[Vince]

Cuckoo - have you already posted your beefs about MLB? I'm not going to buy one until I get to try them all, but I'd like to hear why you didn't like MLB. If you've already posted it, just let me know and I'll dig up the thread.

[Cuckoo]

Hey Vince, I posted just a few random thoughts in another thread about it that I can't find right now, nothing extensive though. I don't have a lot of time to post right now so I'll go into greater detail a bit later, but the biggest problem for me was that it kept resetting my line-ups during Franchise play. That made simming which is something I do a lot in Franchise pretty much impossible. The game play is decent, but it didn't have a few of the little things that I enjoyed about MVP like the throwing meter. They spent a lot of time putting in Franchise elements that I found tedious and completely uninteresting like scheduling public appearances for your stars to boost team exposure. It was a neat concept but not done very well. Luckily, there's the option to allow the computer to handle that stuff. Also, the offseason activity such as the draft is quick and fairly boring. There's barely even any type of Free Agent period. Anyway, you can probably see that I'm much more of a Franchise nut than anything else. If that area of the game isn't solid, I know it won't hold my interest for long.

There is a neat little mode that's similar to Markus "Inside the Park" where you create a player and control him in his career, improving him with talent points, and signing new contracts. This is a bit underdeveloped as well, but is kind of fun for a few days.

If you have anything specific you want to know, let me know. I've realized that different people are typically interested in completely different aspects of the console games so you can't really make broad statements about a game. For me, though, MLB was very mediocre.

[Vince]

Thanks for your opinions!

[FBPro]

I'm hoping to rent this one in the next few days, MVP for PC isn't bad(with some mod help) but does fall short in some areas.

[SackAttack]

Cuckoo, oddly my big gripe with the throwing meter in MVP is that it took too long to queue up when attempting a double play, which means I was able to only turn one or two of them, and those were on bullets to the shortstop.

As far as All-Star goes, it doesn't look like it's significantly different, gameplay-wise, from a year ago. They've added online play, which is cool, but the roster updates are incredibly obscure. They're automatically downloaded when you go on Live, apparently, because everybody has to use identical roster sets. There's no one place to go to download them if you want to save them for offline use, which is a little odd.

Unless I'm missing something, anyway.

Pitching is cool, they've got a behind-the-mound view that works pretty well, but the new Fielder Cam is absolutely atrocious. I turn that off because I hate the swivel effect.

Other than that...if you played ASB '04, ASB '05 should be familiar to you.

[Cuckoo]

Cuckoo, oddly my big gripe with the throwing meter in MVP is that it took too long to queue up when attempting a double play, which means I was able to only turn one or two of them, and those were on bullets to the shortstop.

As far as All-Star goes, it doesn't look like it's significantly different, gameplay-wise, from a year ago. They've added online play, which is cool, but the roster updates are incredibly obscure. They're automatically downloaded when you go on Live, apparently, because everybody has to use identical roster sets. There's no one place to go to download them if you want to save them for offline use, which is a little odd.

Unless I'm missing something, anyway.

Pitching is cool, they've got a behind-the-mound view that works pretty well, but the new Fielder Cam is absolutely atrocious. I turn that off because I hate the swivel effect.

Other than that...if you played ASB '04, ASB '05 should be familiar to you.

I see what you're saying about the throwing meter. I like the concept of it more than anything else. It adds an interesting, realistic dimension to the gameplay, but I agree that it causes some issues on double plays.

Thanks for the info on All-Star. One question: Have they changed much at all about the Franchise mode? Their website is touting a new Franchise mode or something like that, and I was curious what changes they made. Last year's Franchise was pretty cool with option years, waiver, and Rule 5 draft.

[SackAttack]

All of that is still present. The Rule V draft takes place in the winter, players have a limited number of options between the major and minor leagues, and, of course, you have the 40 man roster.

One thing that's new is that they've changed the minor league system a little bit. Last year, if I recall, it split the minors between "High" minors and "Low" minors. This year, there's an actual AAA, AA, and A delineation.

The main thing is that, so far as I can tell, players improve mainly during the offseason and spring training. There's no in-season improvement (unless I'm simply missing something), and no minor league statistics to judge player performance by, so most of your callups are going to wind up being injury replacements.

Also, the Franchise interface is still very, very clunky. I like that they've packed so many options in, but in some cases, it's either time-consuming to get to, or (in the case of the 40 man roster settings) not immediately visible. For example, when I traded for Milton Bradley (since I can't seem to find Opening Day rosters yet), it said I had 41 men on my 40 man roster, and that I needed to drop somebody from the roster. I cut two players until I remembered that I needed to scroll over past the far right (visible) column to reach the rest of the player information.

If they could improve the interface, that would be absolutely huge for Franchise Mode.

I was telling somebody today that if you could combine the GM depth of All-Star with the financial side of MLB 2005, add Vin Scully as announcer (with a GOOD script to work with), take the pitcher/batter interface of MVP, and just the overall gameplay of ESPN Major League Baseball (including lefties with POWER), that very well could be the perfect baseball game.

*drool*

[Archer219]

So far, I love ASB'05.

I've had lots of fun with the expansion mode setting up my team (Las Vegas Outlaws).

My only real complaint is with the so called improved "Fielder Cam". It is kind of strange to have to change the camera angle and field the ball at the same time. Or maybe I just don't multitask quite well enough. But I changed that option to the camera they used in 2004 and am very happy with the game so far.

[SackAttack]

Yeah, Fielder Cam kinda sucks.

I also wish Franchise Mode were more than 20 years so I could use it as a sim, but eh.

[Cuckoo]

Thanks for the thoughts guys. I played last year's version exhaustively, so if this year's hasn't changed much, I'll probably go for either MVP or ESPN, whichever turns out to be better. I really want the one that will offer me the longest playability.