OK, Gentlemen. The time you've all been waiting for(well some of you). Its Graphik's All-Star Baseball 2004 Review for Dummies.
OVERVIEW
Ever since the first Allstar baseball on N64, we were treated with gorgeous graphics under a mediocore baseball sim full of glitches and errors. But as has been the trend this year, everyone seems to have caught up with HH's realistic gameplay.
And baseball video gamers who've yearned for gameplay with graphics are finally getting what they deserve this year.
Now lets take a look at Acclaims Allstar Baseball 2004.
GRAPHIKS!
Well, well, it seems ever since the first N64 game you've either been a fan of ASB's graphics or you have not. Well for the people who have'nt, I wanna know what in the blue hell are they smoking because this game is so beautiful, your girl friend may get jealous over it. Mine has but thats another story. The player models rock all sorts of booty with the most realistic faces I've personally ever witnessed. Even no-name scrubs look correctly portrayed. And you wanna witness how detailed the bodies of the players are. Find the White Soxs Bartolo Colon and see the most chunkiest player in the majors. They sport trademark earrings, chin gaurds, elbow pads, and if they wear their pants baggy or raised. Now to the animations, they are great with outfielders setting up for throws before they catch the ball, the cut-off man raising his arms calling for the ball, one-hand stabs, basket catches, shoe-string catches, bare hand throws,and a whole assortment of throws. The pitcher has alot of animations also when he feels he has a bad call and another thing I noticed thats quite funny. One time I beaned a batter and he started to charge the mound and my pitcher did the infamous karate kid dragon animation. thats something you dont see every day. I not sure if that was in last years game but for me its quite new.
The stadiums are some of the most real and detailed stadiums I ever seen, with great collision detection the ball will bounce of
just about anything in the stadiums. I'm pretty sure for your home team stadiums will look exactly how it looked when you visited it. With plaques, mouments, retired numbers, all in the exact place of the real life stadiums. Acclaim must have went to great heights to get everthing correctly scaled. IMO, their raising the bar on how our virtual baseball stadium should look. With the addition of over 20 more old-time, futuristic or imaginary stadiums, playing exibition games never will feel left out since you might wanna see them all. And since the collision detection is so good, each stadium has an advantage or a weakness that you might wanna explore. Plus the domed stadiums open and close throughout the season. And the crowds are gread, they are hi-res real looking ppl. Even tho the might have only two damn animations they still look great and they actually change with each stadium. For instance, play the braves and you will see braves fans in there with their scapels doing the chop. Another reason to tip your hat to Acclaim.
The down part of the graphics for some may be the sqatting. If this bothers you then you must be very anal because I dont really reconize it. When a person has the ball they usually stay in a throwing postion. The fielding has its glitches, but none to bad where you might freak out becuase he skipped an animation. All in all, this game while fielding looks like a tv broadcast and IMHO cant be toped. I just wish it had a few more camera views, but the one and only view is learnable after a few games so nothing to cry about.
AUDIO
Lets start with the broadcasting. Some dont like it, but after listening to HH's commentary, ASB's commentary is very great. They talk about player specifics like what he did last year, his batting average w/ runners on base, etc. They also tell stories of great ball players. The commentary is in no way repetitive. Everything seems fresh every game. And they seem to work great together. Like I said after playing HH, the commentary on ASB blows HHs into nothingness. The PA says alot like he annouces the game series, what game in the series it is, and I have'nt heard him miss a players name yet. They dont have name reconition b/c my created player is called the SS from the PA and the annoucers. No biggie though.
One thing that bothers me is you there is no sound on the field after you hit the ball. No glove pops, no slide sounds,and no player chatter. the game sounds like if you were in the upper deck if you went to the game. But the addition of Umpire calls
are fantastic b/c it seems to be a few diffrent umpires so they wont sound the same each game. From listening to appeals to hearing him give your pitcher a warning, everything sounds great.
The crowd seems to be the low point of the audio, although not bad, they just dont seem excited enough. They do team specific cheers everynow and then but nothing special. They boo on ue and cheer on cue, but IMo it could of been done a little better. And I almost forgot to mention walk up music. They have real music from rap, to country to mexican music. Sounds good for the 3 seconds it plays, but I can prolly imagine it playing longer if you switched the game speed to normal.
GAMEPLAY
Sweet Jesus, this game has it all. But first I wanna start on the actual gameplay before get to the franchise and other modes.
Well, in comparison to HH, HH still wins but ASB is closely behind. Only difference is that HH's AI is a bit more aggresive. The CPU plays almost like you would. On ASB, the AI is'nt as aggresive and they wont stretch hits. They CPU can hit alot of foul ball in the crowd where I cant hit any. It might be because I use zone batting and no cursor. I dont know but I think the CPU hits more foul balls so it can keep your pitch count with the CPU's pitcher. Pitching is somewaht easier in which with the pitching aid turned on you can throw all strikes and hit corners all day. Even with the pitching aid turned off I learned how to throw strikes the majority of times. So the result is less walks issues by your pitcher. The CPU does issue walks and you have to have a good eye and quick reflexes to draw one. The piching speed is still fast but with zone batting it is easier IMO hitting by just aiming at the pitch than with a normal cursor trying to lock the cursor onto the ball. There is also a classic cursor which is a tad bit bigger, you cant pick where you wanna hit the ball and you cant switch between power hitting and contact. And of course for the feable-minded, theres alway easy batting. All you have to do is swing to make contact. Well you dont have to be feable minded because it is a good way to get use to the blazzin pitch speeds.
The game play is all baseball, some games you'll get over ten hits. Some games you cant buy a hit. Some people say that the CPU has a comeback logic for when you score a run they also score. I dont think thats the case. I think that when you're ahead you get either lazy or cocky and leave pitches up over the plate which results in the CPU crushing your pitcher. And in some cases, most people cant accept the CPU hitting 2 straight doubles, a single then a home run on you. Well guess what, thats baseball. It does'nt happen every game, but it can happen at any time. If you experience this almost every game then you need to find out the problem. If there is a problem with you pitcher getting shelled, there are many ways to find out why. During the game, you can press the right anolog to bring up a options menu, and it tells you the batters hot/cold zone, your pitch history to the paticular batter, and the percentage of pitches you've thrown in a game. You can also have a mound visit which the skippers walks up and it tells you whos on base and their speed, who the next three batters are, and your stats for the day. With all this information you can clearly see why your pitcher is getting smacked around. I've played over 20 games and the majority of loses I have has been my own error. So I dont blame the CPU for anything that happens wrong in my games. Hell, they make mistakes also. Nothing like watching the RF watch a ball go right pass him to recieve a free double or triple. Your bunt game is excellent if you use it correctly. Its kinda hard to steal, cause if a runners on base, the CPU will have a short delivery getting the ball to the plate quicker. And there is also a nice variety of hit locations. You can get doubles or triples. And I'm happy to see that todays baseball games have finally gotten this right. As I said earlier, the CPU does'nt stretch to get that triple alot. Cause they pretty much know whhen their gonna get thrown out. Thats is the good thing about HH, the CPU's agression results in some great exciting moments throughout the game. But dont get me wrong the game still plays a good game of baseball, they just need to make the little things like you, the player throwing walks and the CPU to have aggressive base running.
Now the down side of the gameplay. See me, I'm easy to make happy so absolutly none of these things really bother me. For one, the vaccuum gloves are still there. The replay clearly shows the ball sucking into his glove from 4-5 feet away. Sometimes your bottons are not as responsive as you want them to be. Even during a future throw, they might still pause before going into that animation. There are a few bugs like the CPU snap throwing to a base, and you're responsible for bringing the runner back. If you dont move, the CPU will do nothing to try to get you out. It just goes back to the batter/pitcher.
The dive is almost a complete waist of time. If you dive for a ball with the infielder, he takes to long to get up and throw and the runner will be safe the majority of the time. Only way to have a succesful dive and throw the runner out is for te runners speed to be a D or D-. But like I said, none of these are game killers. Its still a very good baseball sim.
Other play modes off the top of my head are: pickup game,I plyed it once.Nothing special, you just pick from a group of present and past stars in a pickup game in a sandlot. They even wear blue jeans and a stop sign is hame plate. You got your home run derby, your batting practice, and other stuff I cant remember. I just need to get to the bread and butter: The Franchise.
The Franchise, Never before in any sport(besides sims) has there been such an emmersive franchise. Anything you can do in the majors, you can do on this game. I myself started an expansion team, and wanted to build a team from the ground up. You pick a city, mascot and then a stadium before you enter the the expansion draft. The CPU also has an expansion team to even the league out. After all 30 rounds of that then, you gotta set your lineups, your pitching rotation, and head off into spring training to see how will make your 25 man roster. You always have a 40 man roster with Higher Minor Leaguers and Lower. And you can switch them anytime throughout the course of a season. You can also extend thier contracts, budget out your staff and so much that I really cant recall every single detail being a GM. Just think EA, if its in the game, its in the game.
The spring training plays 15 games, in either catus or grapefruit leagues. Each league has only one stadium so dont think your team will have thier own park. Then comes the season, nothing new there but it now has the twib news. You can see who been hot and whos not during the past ten days. the Going, going, gone shows who hit a homerun that particular day. And they also have a weather forcast for each teams game. So thats right, it can either rain on snow on your game. Not to sure about the snow though. They have full sortable stats for each team and thier players, scouting reports where you can see carrer stats, season stats, ratings, or his pesonal which tells you his roster status and if he injured or not. I cant go on about the impressive franchise you need to rent or buy to be in awe yourself. I guarentee you will suffer from drop-jaw syndrome.
All I can say is since I saw the franchise on ASB, I cant even look at HH the same any more. I feel 3DO robbed me.
PRESENTATION
ASB's presentation is second to none.they show so many stats throughout the game it gets mind boggling. And everthing seems complicated to find for the first few hours but you soon whiz thru it all.One thing that has impressed me is all the features this game has. You got multimedia whichshows players talk about various junk. The stadiums tours are to impressive, at first I could care less about it, but after I took the first tour of a stadium, I could'nt stop. You can tour every stadium on the game including future stadiums and the imaginary ones.Another bright idea by Acclaim are the player cards. Like Madden they unlock cheats. And also teams and uniforms so they are kinda worth checking out.
BOTTOM LINE
Since I'm tired of typing all I got to say is this.The game is better than last years, certain things have been fixed, other have'nt, but they have always been minor. If you want a deep franchise with all the toppings, check this game out. So far, the only gripes I've heard people say about this game is the hitting is damn hard. If you take the time to use batting practice and find a cursor to fit your style, this game will be bliss.
GRAPHICS--------90
AUDIO---------------89
GAMEPLAY-------92
PRESENTATION-93
REPLAYABILITY-93
OVERALL---------------------------------91
And yes, the guy from IGN is full of ish.
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