Baseball

Description

This comedy of errors belongs on the permanent DL. It only takes one look at that white grass and green diamond to know that this game is hurting in the worst way. The players are large and the ball moves smoothly, but that's the extent of the good news. You can't even throw a pitch until the second player presses the "signal to pitch" button on his controller. Ugh!! This ill-conceived design flaw makes every game about twice as long! The pitches come in pretty fast, and you swing by pressing a button on the keypad. When balls are hit to the infield, the fielding is totally automatic, which is lame as hell! When a ball's hit to the outfield, a cut-away screen depicts a fielder in a large triangle as the ball approaches from the left. Apparently this is meant to show the ball heading towards the fence, but it looks atrocious and is totally disconcerting. Once you have the ball, you can whip it between bases pretty quickly thanks to the diamond-shaped graphic on the control pad overlay. Unfortunately, the programmers had to get cute and add "arcs" to each throw. As a result, the ball movement looks bizarre - as if it has a mind of its own! Baseball also has its fair share of glitches, including one that will not let your fielder relinquish the ball until all the runners have scored! Yeah, I know it's just a minor bug, but I like to nitpick! And then there's the audio. This game beeps so incessantly that it should come with ear plugs! My buddy Scott offered a five word review for this game: "Beep beep beep beep".