Guy's name is mustardman...
How is the Story
----------------
The Franchise Mode in this game is really very good, in my opinion it allows you to choose how much you want to participate in each game of Spring Training or the Season, and how much you want to be involved in your role as a General Manager. They should have allowed the user to also hire and fire coaches, other baseball game products (even other sports genre games) have this feature.
Graphics
---------
In this generation of sports games, All-Star Baseball 2004 excels in some areas of the graphics arena, and falls quite short in others. As advertised, the stadiums in this game are gorgeous, and I am assuming (because I don't have the opportunity to watch a lot of games on television, nor have I been to many real games in my lifetime) that the stadiums resemble their real-life counterpars as realistically as possible.
Player faces do like who one would expect them to look like, and the player physiques are well proportioned and unique.
My two big gripes with this game are (a) collision detection and (b) player animations. You would think that after all these years of gaming, someone could make a product that has players TRUELY running to outfield walls, and errant pitches HITTING the batter.
What I am talking about, in computing terms, is "collision detection", and to date I haven't seen that implemented well in ANY video game genre for that matter.
It's all good, however, when you get to watch how realistic the flight of the ball is, and how balls realistically bounce off on the turf or grass and off walls. Watching a drive to the gap in left center, or deep down the right field line is a boat load of fun. I actually heard myself saying things like "this is freaking awesome"
I still am puzzled how they could let something like this go unnoticed or unfixed: playerA gets hit in the knee by a pitch, but clearly the pain is in his arm as he is holding his left wrist. The injury report during the game is that he has a broken kneecap. What?!?
Now, the player animations, for the most part, are great. I really feel the problem here is how animations are working in conjunction with collision detection. It really looks silly to see LeftFielderA (my reference to a player instead of using his name) run right up next the corner of the left field wall, and just stand there running in place like he is on a treadmill, while the ball DOES realistically bounce high off the wall and toward the infield. In another situation, my second baseman made a great diving catch of a line drive over the second base bag. The collision detection was horrible, even without the replay you could see the ball appear to hit the ground on the outfield side of the player, and bounce backwards to the middle of the fielder's body, then the ball magically appears in his glove. That's just stupid. The replay was very disappointing.
In yet another situation, Ken Grifey Jr. went to jump up on the center field wall in order to rob a homerun, and it looked gorgeous to see the ball bounce just beyond the top of the wall and back towards the infield, with Griffey appearing to stumble. The problem is that he didn't seem to jump high at all, and when I ran a replay because i thought the play was very cool (too bad we can't save replays, older pc games have this feature) i was very disappointed to see that Griffey was at least 10 feet away from the wall, and appeared to be jumping up and against an invisible wall.
The poorly designed collision dection model really shows through in situatiions like this. It just seems that it would be better to not allow replays at all, if stuff like this is going to happen. Why can we not see things like an infielder stumbling over the bag, or into the dugout or over a railing to catch a popup? I saw one fielder literally stop at leastt a foot short (obvious invisible barrier) of a railing to catch a popup.
Very rarely do you see players going through each other, so I feel like we won't be seeing much more clipping and such. Ironically, that would be an example of GOOD collision detection In short, watching the fielders go for line drives, popups and drives to the outfield is a lot of fun to watch, somewhat close to watching a real game on television.
Oh, did I talk about how cool it is to see the manager walk out to the mound? The pitcher hangs his head, and the catcher is out there talking to him, and you get to watch the manager walk out there, with his cap down over his eyes. It would have been great to see the pitcher give the ball to the manager, and start walking back toward the dugout, but that can be put into next year's game
Music/Sounds
------------
The games, in my opiinion (based on only playing a quick game, and my first spring training game, are ssshhhhhh ... quiet. The crowd does realistically react to great plays, and the commentators have a rather large variety of things to talk about, it's cool to hear them talk about certain players before the game.
There are some noticeable miscues in commentating, such as when the commentator "and this game has an exciting finish!...", when the final score was 14-0 .Still, when playing a game it FEELS quiet. Maybe that is something that I can fix with the game settings.
GamePlay/Controls
-----------------
Learning how to change settings, save your settings and navigate within the menus of All-Star Baseball 2004 can be a bit frustrating. And, that comes from someone who has been gaming for 20 years I got so frustrated with, for example, making changes to the "game control" settings, then when I pressed the B button (as is customary with the XBox, to back out of a screen), the settings would not be changed. Little did I know that you have to press the A button to go back a screen, but it has the effect of clicking OK, instead of the effect of clicking Cancel. So, I'd go back to playing the game, and it would be obvious to see that the settings weren't changed.
It is wierd how they have the left thumbstick working in "one tick" mode, where you have to repeatedly push down on the stick to navigate in appropriate fashion, whereas the directional pad gives you the "hold down to repeat your movements" effect. This drove me batty, and I think they should have decided on one or the other.
All-Star Baseball 2004 has a feature (I've seen it in the High Heat Baseball series over the years), where you can elect to have the computer "generate count", meaning that when each batter is at the plate, you usually will only have to make one decision per batter. This can save a lot of time in not having to watch every single pitch, but it can be tricky if you don't remember to look up at the count before making an important decision before the pitcher releases the ball.
Three things that I am not seeing enough of right now are (a) injuries, (b) errors and (c) stolen base attempts. I have yet to see the computer pitcher throw over to ANY base that I have a runner on, in order to keep me close to the bag. There really should be more of this. The real game of baseball provides ample opportunity to watch miscues, botched pickups of grounders, players crashing into each other. I haven't seen these sorts of things, yet. It would be great, not that I'd WANT to be on the short end of the stick, to see a thirdbaseman botch a throw over to first.
Hey, I do remember seeing one throw today, that took the first baseman off the bag, thus allowing the runner to be safe, and I thought that was cool It was real enough looking, that I was sitting there waiting for the computer to do a replay of it. The computer seems to do a great job of showing replays of critical plays and awe inspiring catches.
I will keep an eye out for those things, and possibly write another review of the game here (if gamesunderground.net allows me to do that) as I learn more about this game.
I think this game has a lot of replay value, the number one reason being that it MAKES you want to keep playing and improving your performance. I spent more time checking out the features of this game, and playing the trivia game, then I did playing actual games today. What I mean is, that randomly DURING a game it will ask you a baseball related question (tney are VERY good questions, that would drive any number crunching nut << such as myself >> batty), and I'm guessing you only have so much time to answer. If you answer correctly, you get a point or two.
Also, after each ining you are allotted "points" depending on how well you did in that inning, such as retiring the side, hitting a homerun, robbing a homerun, etc. What are these points for? You can use these points to "buy" baseball cards, which I think is a very cool feature. I haven't yet figured out how much the cards in the game cost, but I have a feeling I'm not even close to being able to buy any packs. I think what happens is that in the game you buy the packs of cards, and you get to enjoy the suspense of not knowing which cards you will get. Now, if they give you cards that are from the 1980s and older, that would be VERY cool.
In a nutshell, this game has more replay value from a GM and baseball fanatic standpoint, then from Joe Schmoe wanting to stand up at the plate and hitting a blazing 2-seam fastball, or 75 mph "circle change".
My wife and I will surely play against each other a lot in this game, but I think the batting/pitching interface needs some work, so we may wind up doing more of the "manage only" type games. Right now, I am not sold on the idea of having to place the batting cursor where you THINK the pitch will arrive, as in real life you DO have a split second to react to the pitch and aim for the ball with your bat. They way that Acclaim constructed it, I find it hard to imagine amassing realistic offensive numbers.
I really don't think that I'm that bad of a baseball video game nut, but I did manage to strike out 25 times in that "quick game" that I played, it probably didn't help matters that I had the misfortune of facing a knuckballer for 8 innings. By the 9th inning, I was already down 14-0 (I didn't do so hot in the outfield, throwing to the right bases), so that game was in the bag.
I must mention that the knuckleball in this game is very nasty. Sure, you have plenty of time to watch it (knuckleballs don't generally move fast in real life, either) come to the plate, but its movement is so erratic, that you don't stand much of a chance to make contact with it. Perhaps I will get better with this, and find an easier mode of hitting or something.
As I know no review can be truely complete, there is always going to be something missed, I feel that I have a very good grasp on the nuances of this game after just a couple of hours with it. Having said that, my suggestion to the buyer-to-be is that you ask yourself this question: Do I want to be a manager or a player? If you want to be a manager, this game is for you. If not, then you may want to consider at least spending some time with the management aspects of the game, along with the "throw the ball, hit the ball" aspects, before you go shelling out $50 bucks for this product.
For this game I give the following ratings.
Graphics: 4.3
(5) Players/Animations
(5) Stadiums
(5) Ball Physics
(4) Menu Interfaces
(4) Collision Detection
(3) Replays
(3) Crowd
Sound 3.6
(4) Commentators
(4) Player-Walkup Music, Menus
(4) Crowd
(3) Interviews (movies) ... not well done
(3) Bounces, Hits, Catches
Controls 2.9
(4) Menu Navigation
(4) Pitching
(4) Fielding
(3) In-Game Access to Management
(3) Configuring/Saving Settings
(2) Batting
Replayability 4.3
(5) Incentives
(4) Statistical Analysis/ Personal Achievements
(4) Competing with another human (safe bet here)
(4) Trivia, Pick-Up Game, Task List
Realism 4.6
(5) In-Game Stats
(3) Human-vs-Computer (All-Star level, you hit/pitch)
(5) Simulating of Games
(5) Seasonal Totals (e.g. home runs)
(5) Weather
(5) "Stadium Factor" (how stadiums impact play)
(4) Injuries
(4) Player Contract Values (equivalency to dollars)
(4) Player Transactions
Rating For Game 4.4 (8.8 out of 10)
How is the Story
----------------
The Franchise Mode in this game is really very good, in my opinion it allows you to choose how much you want to participate in each game of Spring Training or the Season, and how much you want to be involved in your role as a General Manager. They should have allowed the user to also hire and fire coaches, other baseball game products (even other sports genre games) have this feature.
Graphics
---------
In this generation of sports games, All-Star Baseball 2004 excels in some areas of the graphics arena, and falls quite short in others. As advertised, the stadiums in this game are gorgeous, and I am assuming (because I don't have the opportunity to watch a lot of games on television, nor have I been to many real games in my lifetime) that the stadiums resemble their real-life counterpars as realistically as possible.
Player faces do like who one would expect them to look like, and the player physiques are well proportioned and unique.
My two big gripes with this game are (a) collision detection and (b) player animations. You would think that after all these years of gaming, someone could make a product that has players TRUELY running to outfield walls, and errant pitches HITTING the batter.
What I am talking about, in computing terms, is "collision detection", and to date I haven't seen that implemented well in ANY video game genre for that matter.
It's all good, however, when you get to watch how realistic the flight of the ball is, and how balls realistically bounce off on the turf or grass and off walls. Watching a drive to the gap in left center, or deep down the right field line is a boat load of fun. I actually heard myself saying things like "this is freaking awesome"
I still am puzzled how they could let something like this go unnoticed or unfixed: playerA gets hit in the knee by a pitch, but clearly the pain is in his arm as he is holding his left wrist. The injury report during the game is that he has a broken kneecap. What?!?
Now, the player animations, for the most part, are great. I really feel the problem here is how animations are working in conjunction with collision detection. It really looks silly to see LeftFielderA (my reference to a player instead of using his name) run right up next the corner of the left field wall, and just stand there running in place like he is on a treadmill, while the ball DOES realistically bounce high off the wall and toward the infield. In another situation, my second baseman made a great diving catch of a line drive over the second base bag. The collision detection was horrible, even without the replay you could see the ball appear to hit the ground on the outfield side of the player, and bounce backwards to the middle of the fielder's body, then the ball magically appears in his glove. That's just stupid. The replay was very disappointing.
In yet another situation, Ken Grifey Jr. went to jump up on the center field wall in order to rob a homerun, and it looked gorgeous to see the ball bounce just beyond the top of the wall and back towards the infield, with Griffey appearing to stumble. The problem is that he didn't seem to jump high at all, and when I ran a replay because i thought the play was very cool (too bad we can't save replays, older pc games have this feature) i was very disappointed to see that Griffey was at least 10 feet away from the wall, and appeared to be jumping up and against an invisible wall.
The poorly designed collision dection model really shows through in situatiions like this. It just seems that it would be better to not allow replays at all, if stuff like this is going to happen. Why can we not see things like an infielder stumbling over the bag, or into the dugout or over a railing to catch a popup? I saw one fielder literally stop at leastt a foot short (obvious invisible barrier) of a railing to catch a popup.
Very rarely do you see players going through each other, so I feel like we won't be seeing much more clipping and such. Ironically, that would be an example of GOOD collision detection In short, watching the fielders go for line drives, popups and drives to the outfield is a lot of fun to watch, somewhat close to watching a real game on television.
Oh, did I talk about how cool it is to see the manager walk out to the mound? The pitcher hangs his head, and the catcher is out there talking to him, and you get to watch the manager walk out there, with his cap down over his eyes. It would have been great to see the pitcher give the ball to the manager, and start walking back toward the dugout, but that can be put into next year's game
Music/Sounds
------------
The games, in my opiinion (based on only playing a quick game, and my first spring training game, are ssshhhhhh ... quiet. The crowd does realistically react to great plays, and the commentators have a rather large variety of things to talk about, it's cool to hear them talk about certain players before the game.
There are some noticeable miscues in commentating, such as when the commentator "and this game has an exciting finish!...", when the final score was 14-0 .Still, when playing a game it FEELS quiet. Maybe that is something that I can fix with the game settings.
GamePlay/Controls
-----------------
Learning how to change settings, save your settings and navigate within the menus of All-Star Baseball 2004 can be a bit frustrating. And, that comes from someone who has been gaming for 20 years I got so frustrated with, for example, making changes to the "game control" settings, then when I pressed the B button (as is customary with the XBox, to back out of a screen), the settings would not be changed. Little did I know that you have to press the A button to go back a screen, but it has the effect of clicking OK, instead of the effect of clicking Cancel. So, I'd go back to playing the game, and it would be obvious to see that the settings weren't changed.
It is wierd how they have the left thumbstick working in "one tick" mode, where you have to repeatedly push down on the stick to navigate in appropriate fashion, whereas the directional pad gives you the "hold down to repeat your movements" effect. This drove me batty, and I think they should have decided on one or the other.
All-Star Baseball 2004 has a feature (I've seen it in the High Heat Baseball series over the years), where you can elect to have the computer "generate count", meaning that when each batter is at the plate, you usually will only have to make one decision per batter. This can save a lot of time in not having to watch every single pitch, but it can be tricky if you don't remember to look up at the count before making an important decision before the pitcher releases the ball.
Three things that I am not seeing enough of right now are (a) injuries, (b) errors and (c) stolen base attempts. I have yet to see the computer pitcher throw over to ANY base that I have a runner on, in order to keep me close to the bag. There really should be more of this. The real game of baseball provides ample opportunity to watch miscues, botched pickups of grounders, players crashing into each other. I haven't seen these sorts of things, yet. It would be great, not that I'd WANT to be on the short end of the stick, to see a thirdbaseman botch a throw over to first.
Hey, I do remember seeing one throw today, that took the first baseman off the bag, thus allowing the runner to be safe, and I thought that was cool It was real enough looking, that I was sitting there waiting for the computer to do a replay of it. The computer seems to do a great job of showing replays of critical plays and awe inspiring catches.
I will keep an eye out for those things, and possibly write another review of the game here (if gamesunderground.net allows me to do that) as I learn more about this game.
I think this game has a lot of replay value, the number one reason being that it MAKES you want to keep playing and improving your performance. I spent more time checking out the features of this game, and playing the trivia game, then I did playing actual games today. What I mean is, that randomly DURING a game it will ask you a baseball related question (tney are VERY good questions, that would drive any number crunching nut << such as myself >> batty), and I'm guessing you only have so much time to answer. If you answer correctly, you get a point or two.
Also, after each ining you are allotted "points" depending on how well you did in that inning, such as retiring the side, hitting a homerun, robbing a homerun, etc. What are these points for? You can use these points to "buy" baseball cards, which I think is a very cool feature. I haven't yet figured out how much the cards in the game cost, but I have a feeling I'm not even close to being able to buy any packs. I think what happens is that in the game you buy the packs of cards, and you get to enjoy the suspense of not knowing which cards you will get. Now, if they give you cards that are from the 1980s and older, that would be VERY cool.
In a nutshell, this game has more replay value from a GM and baseball fanatic standpoint, then from Joe Schmoe wanting to stand up at the plate and hitting a blazing 2-seam fastball, or 75 mph "circle change".
My wife and I will surely play against each other a lot in this game, but I think the batting/pitching interface needs some work, so we may wind up doing more of the "manage only" type games. Right now, I am not sold on the idea of having to place the batting cursor where you THINK the pitch will arrive, as in real life you DO have a split second to react to the pitch and aim for the ball with your bat. They way that Acclaim constructed it, I find it hard to imagine amassing realistic offensive numbers.
I really don't think that I'm that bad of a baseball video game nut, but I did manage to strike out 25 times in that "quick game" that I played, it probably didn't help matters that I had the misfortune of facing a knuckballer for 8 innings. By the 9th inning, I was already down 14-0 (I didn't do so hot in the outfield, throwing to the right bases), so that game was in the bag.
I must mention that the knuckleball in this game is very nasty. Sure, you have plenty of time to watch it (knuckleballs don't generally move fast in real life, either) come to the plate, but its movement is so erratic, that you don't stand much of a chance to make contact with it. Perhaps I will get better with this, and find an easier mode of hitting or something.
As I know no review can be truely complete, there is always going to be something missed, I feel that I have a very good grasp on the nuances of this game after just a couple of hours with it. Having said that, my suggestion to the buyer-to-be is that you ask yourself this question: Do I want to be a manager or a player? If you want to be a manager, this game is for you. If not, then you may want to consider at least spending some time with the management aspects of the game, along with the "throw the ball, hit the ball" aspects, before you go shelling out $50 bucks for this product.
For this game I give the following ratings.
Graphics: 4.3
(5) Players/Animations
(5) Stadiums
(5) Ball Physics
(4) Menu Interfaces
(4) Collision Detection
(3) Replays
(3) Crowd
Sound 3.6
(4) Commentators
(4) Player-Walkup Music, Menus
(4) Crowd
(3) Interviews (movies) ... not well done
(3) Bounces, Hits, Catches
Controls 2.9
(4) Menu Navigation
(4) Pitching
(4) Fielding
(3) In-Game Access to Management
(3) Configuring/Saving Settings
(2) Batting
Replayability 4.3
(5) Incentives
(4) Statistical Analysis/ Personal Achievements
(4) Competing with another human (safe bet here)
(4) Trivia, Pick-Up Game, Task List
Realism 4.6
(5) In-Game Stats
(3) Human-vs-Computer (All-Star level, you hit/pitch)
(5) Simulating of Games
(5) Seasonal Totals (e.g. home runs)
(5) Weather
(5) "Stadium Factor" (how stadiums impact play)
(4) Injuries
(4) Player Contract Values (equivalency to dollars)
(4) Player Transactions
Rating For Game 4.4 (8.8 out of 10)
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