Barry Bonds Hits 200 Homeruns in one Season!!!! (Sports W/O)

Intro:

I’m not really into baseball. World Series Baseball 2K2 (WSB2K2) is the first baseball videogame that I ever bought. So what made me buy it? First off, I love sports games. It doesn’t matter what sport, because if it’s fun then I’m going to play it. Then I found out that Visual Concepts was going to create WSB2K2. So far VC has done a great job with the NBA 2K series, the NFL 2K series, and a decent job with NHL2K. I was determined to buy WSB2K2, even if it was good or bad.

Gameplay:

I never had a chance to play the horror that was WSB2K1, and that’s a good thing. This year’s game is being developed by a new team and totally redone from the ground up. I think it’s nice to start fresh. Like most console baseball games WSB offers a nice batch of game modes. For starters you have your Exhibition and Quick start modes. The majority of the time I spent with WSB was in the season mode, but I’ll talk about that more later on. The rest of the modes include Franchise, Home Run Derby, Network and Playoffs.

Like all baseball games, WSB gives you the option of customizing most of the aspects of your baseball team. You can change line-ups, change positions, and sign free agents. If you like you can also create your own player and sign them to your favorite team. The create-a-player option is pretty cool, but I found some major problems with some aspects of it. One complaint would be the lack of player information and player attributes. For instance you cannot give your player an age, and you can’t select what kind of body type the player has. My second gripe deals with the fact that your created players are deleted once you start a new season or playoffs.

The season mode is perhaps the games most engrossing element. When it comes to sports games I tend to shorten the season to half the games played, but in WSB I actually played through a whole season. The season options are adequate, but I wish there was the option of picking how many innings to play. Once you have finished selecting your desired season preferences, you are thrown into a screen with all your season information. You can check out your schedule, check statistics, and play around with your team’s management. The one thing that I didn’t like about this interface was the way you play the games. It’s very confusing and a pain in the butt if you forget. You must first enter the schedule menu, select the date you want to play, and press A. If you happen to press the start button then that game is simulated for you. That’s problem number one. If you did press A, you are shown a screen with the games played that day. You must then go down to your team’s game and press A to play that match. Again, pressing the wrong button can simulate that game. Visual Concepts really needs to revamp this interface in next year’s game, because this year’s version is not user friendly.

Once you manage your way through the menus and play a game the real fun begins. I first want to start off with offense. WSB uses a pretty simple batting setup. You are given a circular cursor that’s in the pitcher’s box, and you must follow the ball as it comes to the plate (this is in pro modes). On the easy mode you can actually see where the ball will be placed. Once you have your cursor in the right place you then press A to swing. That’s about it. You also have the ability to bunt, and I found it to be pretty good too. There were some features that I thought needed to be included. WSB controls are very easy, and as a result the game isn’t deep. In other sports titles, such as the MLB series for Playstation, you can actually move the batter around when he’s up to bat. In WSB the batter stays at the same spot. Then there’s no power button, which really makes the game unrealistic. The rest of the offense game consists of running around the bases. It’s a little goofy at first, but with a couple games you get hang out it.

The pitching system is a little tricky. Pitching starts out with an image of the ball in the pitcher’s box. You must then use the analog control and move the ball to the position you want. You then press the A button and the pitch is thrown. Various pitches (fastball, curve, etc.) are determined by where you placed the ball. A small chart allows you to view where the ball must be placed in order to throw the pitch you want. Each batter in the game has a chart that shows their hot and cold zones. The pitcher can then use this chart to determine where most of their pitches should be thrown. For the most part the hot and cold zones are pretty accurate. The pitching system also contains a huge twist. A pitch position can be changed various times before the pitch is thrown. So if you place the pitch in the upper right hand corner, you can then move the cursor again somewhere else and place it to that position. It’s kind of hard to explain, but this feature really works well. The only problem I found with the pitches is that they tend to float at the screen.

Fielding was a huge problem in WSB2K1. In last year’s version the computer had complete control of your outfielders. This year’s version gives you complete control over everyone on the team. So how does if fair? The manual fielding works great for most of the hits in the game. You even have the ability to dive at balls, which I found to be very helpful. Baseline hits are perhaps the hardest balls to get in the game, and can result into many runs. These balls are hit so fast down the line that it’s practically impossible to react to. Throwing the ball to the bases is very easy, because the four face buttons on the control act as the bases. The camera work becomes an issues when playing defense. There are times where the ball is hit into areas that it’s hard to see. The camera stays at a far distance away from the ball, giving the player a hard time picking it up. This has happened to me various times and has resulted into cheap runs.

There’s a lot of stuff in WSB2k2 that needs to be fixed. The difficulty level is a joke and scores most games are outrageously high. Even on the hardest setting I was able to blow out teams by 15 or 20 runs. This leads to my next point; the statistics for my team's players were too high. The lowest batting average for any person on my team was .500 and the highest was a little over .800. Even though I don’t watch baseball, I do know a lot about the rules and stats. These percentages are way too high, and no starting player in MLB could bat .800. And that’s where my title comes into place. Big hitters like Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Sammy Sosa can average 1 to 3 homeruns a game. Even on the hardest sitting I was able to hit a couple dingers in every game.

The computer AI and the player’s team AI really stink. Batting wise the computer hits well, but their runners make dumb mistakes. Let’s just say that a computer runner is on first base. The next batter pops out in midfield, and the midfielder throws the ball to third base. The computer starts to run, and if the ball is cut off they freeze and act like they don’t know what happened. So basically this gives you a free out. This happens occasionally, and doesn’t really become a major issue. Your team makes a lot of retarded mistakes when a ball is hit. When a ball is hit into leftfield, then that ball should be taken care of by the leftfielder. However, in WSB2K2 the third baseman and centerfielder run after the ball too. Bunting is also hilarious. The ball can be placed right in front of the pitcher, but instead of him getting the ball, he covers home plate. What makes matters worse is that nobody else is on the bases. There are so many small problems in WSB2K2 that I could go on all day talking about them, but I’ll stop right here.

It’s seem like I’m really putting down WSB2k2, but these flaws can be overlooked easily when you play. WSB is fun, and that’s all that matters. The simplistic control setup allows any person to jump right in and play. The 2-player mode is very fun, and the season mode provides you with many entertaining games.

Graphics:

WSB2K2 overall looks solid. The stadium models are identical to their real life counterparts. The crowd looks good for once, and they actually look lifelike and move. Player models are lacking in terms of facial features and body types. They all look the same, but thankfully you can distinguish the all-star players. The batting animations are pretty cool. You can see batters curl their hands smoothly over the bat, or toss it at the plate in frustration when they strikeout. There are some goofy animations in the game that will make you laugh. These include outfielders throwing the ball backwards and players catching the ball without even looking at it. The lack of collision detection takes out the realism. I mean what’s up with that, even Triple Play for the Genesis had players collide with each other. Shadow effects are nicely used when players are at the plate, and the fields look decent. The replay option was a little disappointing and didn’t really offer anything exciting. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t see homerun balls land in the San Francisco bay when playing at Pac Bell Park.

Sound:

Completely lacking in every category. The commentary is okay, but there’s no color commentary. Analogies and funny comments are no where to be found. As a result the commentary is very dry. The sound effects are average, there’s really nothing that stands out. The crowds never makes realistic chants and never seem to get things going. Music is left out in the games. How cool would it be to hear Who Let the Dogs Out during an inning? Okay, maybe that’s a bad example.

Overall:

Out of all the 2K games I have, WSB2k2 is the one that I’ve played the most. Maybe it’s because I haven’t played a baseball game in like 2 years, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s probably the last new released Dreamcast game that I got for the system. Baseball fans may be turned off by some of the game’s flaws, but believe me this game is meant to be played by anyone looking for some fun sports action. It’s no doubt the best baseball game for the Dreamcast.

This review is part of Rock_On’s Sports Write-Off, where you write about anything that has to do with sports. It’s cool so check out the other people that contributed, or will contribute, or…just check them out:

Rock_On
The_Wood
Yarrick
mycouponz
Pika312
Swanton
Jo.Com
Dantesguide
RPGGuy16
Jeremy1465
Lisa_J
bwoo
ByBob
Erny6795