I had ASB 05 for about a week, my impressions soo far.

[JOEdellis]

Re: I had ASB 05 for about a week, my impressions soo far.

no you can't. Once you swing the bat the cursor is stuck. The game looks great, however I don't see how you are hitting so well with the cursor cause I could not hit fastballs in simulation pitching on legend at all. It is virtually impossible to hit a fastball on that level with a cursor. The pitch is too fast.

I like the game alot but the roster options are terrible, you can't release players, the interface is confusing and convoluted, the options and all the stuff you want to do is so hard to find due to the bad user interface. Well its just a very difficult game to manage that is for sure!

Its really all about Timing, maybe you are the type that are not used to FAST pitches and didnt get the timing down, I can easily hit any pitch on any batting option on LEGEND/SIM(fastest) pitch type.

The 2D cursor hitting I just see it as just ZONE HITTING but with a target aid roaming around, thats about it, you basically do the samething in Zone hitting but without a target if you think about it.

You move the L stick and press X at where you see the ball going and with the right timing it turns into instant contact. Dont get it twisted i am getting contact very well, doesnt mean all equals hits or HRs, but most do turn into that because the AI pitches with no strategy just for grounders or flyballs and not to strike me out.

3D cursor is more easy then 2D, but cooler do because you can basically pick what you want the ball to go. If you go spend days in batting practice mode with all batting options you can easily master the timing of this game.

the pitches are not even that fast, i wish they were faster actually. Some guy told me that in ASB04 (which i didnt play) he said the pitches were faster, soo fast that it made some gamers get mad and return the game.

Clearly all batting options were made to please the ones who cried in ASB 04 in ASB 05, ACCLAIM heard the cries and made the game more CASUAL friendly with all these batting options and turned the speed down even on the fastest level.


Not sure about the Roster issues you had, the Roster Managements are quite possibly the best i seen, like i told you i update the rosters with ease and yes you can easily release players/add/trade ect like nothing, maybe you didnt get used to the interface, to me it seem very simple. So i dont really get where you got that roster managing its difficult stuff, i never saw it that way.

[catcatch22]

Re: I had ASB 05 for about a week, my impressions soo far.

You can't release a guy, its just like home run king, you have to replace the player on the roster with a free agent. You can't just release him. Nor can you just assign someone to another team it has to be a trade just like homerun king. If the roster management was just a bit easier like in ESPN 2k4 or world series 2k3 I would be able to do the whole national league in a day. Now just to do one team it is very tedious since you can not truly move players totally unencumbered.

As for the simulation speed not classic. Its not possible to hit in a realistic manner with that speed meaning that the cursor is to slow. The cursor in ESPN 2k4 was fast and more nimble. This cursor is slow and not as responsive. So basically your just guessing up, left, right down and swing right away, to me thats not really what I want. I like to be able to set up my hits and place the cursor below the ball, inside the ball or on top and with the simulation pitch speeds you can't do that its just like you said, guess close your eyes and swing.

[catcatch22]

Re: I had ASB 05 for about a week, my impressions soo far.

Figured out how to release players finally, the help menu isn't clear enough as to what you can do on some screens.

I definitly like the games graphics, especially the ball parks. Not as deep and accurate as 2k1 on the dreamcast but the resolution on the xbox on 480p is soo good its extremely well done. I also like that you can play your own music on the xbox harddrive in the game as well as batter walkups.

The batter walkups is handled much better in this game. I think I know how to make the rosters editable for regular exhibition play.

[catcatch22]

Re: I had ASB 05 for about a week, my impressions soo far.

nope doesn't work for the xbox, can't make the franchise rosters into a normal exhibition roster. At least not that I know of from looking at the zip file. If there was a way to open up the AS2005 file.