Реферат: Baseball Essay Research Paper AllStar Baseball 2002It

Conversely, there are some cases where the transition animation between throws is pretty awful. If you don’t take advantage of the pre-loading of throws, the player will reset to a base animation before going to throw the ball after catching it and even when you do pre-load throws, there’s a little hiccup in the middle of the motion that makes it look like the player is having problems getting the ball out of his glove. It’s never a major nuisance, but something that definitely could use some improvements.

Observant players will find that All-Star Baseball is filled with a lot of little details in the way of animation that might get overlooked by some. Outfielders will slap their gloves on their thigh when waiting for a fly ball and fully animated base coaches will drop to their knees and pound the ground to let the baserunner know that he should slide, and the umpires will realistically signal home runs, foul balls, strikes and other calls. The crowds are also fully animated, even though still 2D, and pitchers that are warming up in the bullpen can be seen doing it during gameplay. All-Star Baseball might not seem as visually as impressive as Triple Play Baseball on the surface, but it definitely holds its own thanks to all of these little things.

Sound

Thom Brennaman handles the game’s play-by-play, while the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bob Brenly, does the commentary with the PA duties taken care of by the Texas Rangers’ Chuck Morgan. The general play-by-play is generally dry and unexciting, with even the emotion announcements seeming a bit on the robotic side, but it’s generally in tune with what’s happening in the game and sometimes pretty in depth. What’s really cool is that a very good job has been done in realistically mixing in the PA work with the commentary so that the commentators will often still speak to each other while an announcement is being made in the background.

People looking for outrageous arcade-sounds to spice up their baseball game, will be sorely disappointed with what All-Star Baseball has to offer in terms of sound effects. But, purists that want more realistic sounds will be in baseball heaven. The crack of the bat is pretty sharp and there are a lot of cool crown noises and background stuff that’ll pop-up over the course of a game.

Comments

Since I haven’t quite put enough time in with the final version of 3DO’s High Heat Major League Baseball 2002 and haven’t even seen Sony’s MLB 2002 in action at all, it might be a bit premature to label All-Star Baseball 2002 the best game on the system quite yet. On the other hand, I have no problem saying that it’s a better overall game of baseball than EA Sports’ offering, Triple Play Baseball, and offers visuals that are far superior to 3DO’s soon-to-be released product.

All-Star Baseball 2002 isn’t a perfect game and it does have some major flaws, such as the horrific baserunning by the computer AI, but it’s a very solid game of baseball that can be attuned to fit the gameplay needs of the finicky baseball purist or the casual fan. It might be a bit homer happy on the whole, but it’s still possible to get low scoring pitching battles against the computer on the All Star setting, even after playing a lot of games.

For instance, deep into a season playing as the Boston Red Sox and after a five game winning streak where I was able to crank 21 round trippers, I lost a 1-0 pitching duel with Greg Maddux of the Atlanta Braves. Maddux limited me to three hits, all of which were singles, and Atlanta scored its only run in the sixth inning after Maddux bunted Brogna to 2nd who then scored on a single by Veras after a strikeout of Furcal. It was a disappointing loss, but one of the most rewarding games of videogame baseball that I’ve played in a while.

It’s because of occurrences like this and the fact that the game offers such a tremendous amount of customizable options and a large feature set that I strongly believe that All-Star is the best in the genre currently available on PlayStation 2 and is the game that all future releases must live up to.

–Gino