Baseball fans always look forward to spring with renewed hope and enthusiasm. After watching a few baseball games I always seem to get the urge to play a baseball video game -- fortunately, there's usually a new one on the market to satisfy that yen.
I played Triple Play on the Playstation last year and the menus and gameplay are very similar in this game. Four new stadiums have been added to Major League Baseball and are in this game. Players can dive for balls, have a burst of speed, or climb the outfield fence and reach over the stands into the crowd to snag a foul ball.
You can also have the cpu handle the base running or fielder control. The game has four difficulty levels and also has a separate hitting difficulty level so this is one game your skill level will never outgrow. However you shouldn't limit yourself to playing the computer; this game is also a lot of fun when played against a friend. If you can't get together in person then you can hook up and go head to head over the modem or Internet. I did not get a chance to try this out, but it looks pretty straightforward.
There are the usual game modes: a home run hitting contest, a legends homerun, full or modified length season play, playoffs and world series action. Trades are done by player ratings. Your team balance is just docked or credited the difference between the players in the deal.
The graphics are clear, run smoothly with no glitches or hiccups, and are impressive. The players' heads are still a little too blocky for me, but at least they have the correct faces plastered on the front.
The stadiums look good and besides the four new stadiums added this year there are also three "extreme" stadiums: Construction Site, Castle, and Living Room. PC baseball games always seem to have an advantage over their console counterparts. The graphics are better, the load times before games is ten times faster over Playstation, though that may not be the case with N64 , and the game usually packs in more stats and added features.
This is one of the best baseball games you can get your mitts on. Weather conditions can be random, clear, or overcast, and wind effects can be switched on and off as you prefer. Trades in season play can be made with a quasi intelligent mechanism turned on to disable blatant ripoffs. A full-function player editor is also included for those who want to put themselves into the game.
Three control methods are featured. Along with the traditional keyboard and gamepad configurations, EA has included mouse control. This works quite well, allowing the user to click on menus to select swing and pitch type, and advance runners by clicking on the standard base diagram.
All three allow the gamer a lot of control, both at the plate and in the field. Batters can aim their swings, fielders can throw conservatively or go for broke with an aggressive toss, and pitchers can apply aftertouch to spin the ball however they wish after it's been released. So, Triple Play has a lot to offer, right? As attractive as the list of options undoubtedly is, it means nothing if the gameplay it fronts is unsound.
And the gameplay here is about as unsound as it gets. First of all, let's look at the most important component: the pitcher-batter confrontation. Hurlers should be rewarded for varying pitch location and selection. If my virtual Pedro Martinez follows a couple of heaters with a devastating change, he should be rewarded with a whiff most of the time.
Same goes for hitting. If I can get Larry Walker to work a or count, I should be paid off with something meaty down the middle.
Yet EA Sports doesn't appear to have bothered with this. Pitches are obviously taken and dished out by the computer AI on an individual basis regardless of count. In other words, I'm more likely to see the program crush Pedro's change than I am of seeing it swing through. This is simply unforgivable for anyone who follows and appreciates baseball. It really is a mind game, first and foremost. One of the best things about watching a big league game is the unparalleled manipulation that's constantly going on.
Pitchers have to mess with the heads of batters or hit the showers early. It's not about just throwing a 95MPH fastball; it's about when and where to throw it. If you don't work the count, and play your game, not his, you'll be sitting back down awfully fast. Yet the designers of this series either still don't understand this, or simply don't care. Triple Play is all about power and brute force.
You think, you lose. It doesn't matter when you unleash that wicked slider or lay down that bunt. All that matters is swinging and throwing as hard as you can. All the subtlety, all the magic, that has made the game a draw for more than a century now, is missing. From left to right: Home run challenge play; ka-boom; here it comes! In the end, this results in a game that doesn't play much like baseball at any level.
What's on your screen won't compare to either sandlot ball or The Show. Scoring is prodigious. Playing at the lowest difficulty setting results in Brobdingnagian efforts; I scored 23 runs in a five-inning tilt with the Indians that served as my introduction to the game. This doesn't change much even when you ramp everything up.
If anything, the game gets even more frustrating then because the computer starts hitting the gaps with about every third pitch while you simply can't. Homers are far above the Major League average at all levels, even taking into account this year's inflated numbers. Fielding isn't quite as bad as in past Triple Play s. Everything is accelerated, but not so much that you can't make plays that you should.
I was relieved to see that routine grounders generally play out like routine grounders for a change. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of those slow rollers; almost everything is cranked. If you have any unlockables please submit them. Go to the stadium select screen. Go to the far right of the screen. If this works you will hear 'Triple Play 99'. Then go to the right, You will find a threehidden stadiums; A Roman , A future stadium, anda little league field.
Look for EA Sports' fan favorite in March. Baseball games fall into two categories: the painfully realistic type that your grandpa would dig if he actually played games and those that your little brother loves because he can hit cannon-shot home runs with his eyes closed. The Triple Play series fits into the second category like a key in a lock. But honestly, I dont mind; in fact, Ive been waving the Triple Play love flag for several years now.
This edition, however, is testing my allegiance. For starters, I expect Xbox titles to look one click shy of magnificent, or at least better than a PS2 game. In this slugger, some of the stadiums like Wrigley Field look OK, but the players are out of proportion big legs, small torso, big head. They all look tike they came from the same warped model.
While thats not terribly distracting, the choppy framerate is. The throwing animations in particular are chop, chop, choppy. My final gripe: Compared to last years PS2 version, the frequency of home runs has been scaled back, but the variety of hits is still flat.
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