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Interplay Sports Baseball 2000 Review
Noel Brady
00/12/0000
Interplay are obviously sticking their neck out by believing that there are enough baseball, or they wouldn't be going up against EA's Triple Play 2000.
So, for those who watch and are fans of the sport, this will be a special treat. For all three of you. Interplay's previous games, were in all honesty, not bad games at all, they were just, well, to put it bluntly, ugly and slow. (I'm blunt but not mean!) So this year, the team aimed for better looks, textures, frame rates, and a few other superb little ditties that put this game right up in the contending seat with the big boys.
At first glance, Baseball 2000 is barely distinguishable from the EA title. It uses the standard over-the-plate view for batting and pitching, covering fielding with a floating camera or quick cuts between different angles. After a while though, it reveals itself to be more sophisticated when it comes to pitching and less forgiving when batting. Novices and armchair fans are more likely to be drawn to EA's offering. Actually, they'd probably prefer any decent sports sim to this. Not because there's anything wrong with it, not because it's a bad game but because baseball can become monotonous very quickly. Easy-to-use controls and a stack of options mark this out, but the restrictions of the sport itself severely limit its appeal.
The X button gives you a contact swing, triangle for bunt, and O is a full contact swing. In a nice touch, Interplay's game enables you to aim your swings in the Pro and All-star modes by hitting the D-button and X or O. The pitching system is a four-button affair, each button representing a kind of pitch and the direction buttons extending the direction you push in. The square button is the specialty pitch, which ranges from sinker to knuckleball, change-up, etc. The entire pitching system is a good, solid simple thing that doesn't pulse with bells and whistles, but enables straightforward no-nonsense play. And of course, pitchers can bean batters and pick off runners with the same relative ease.
The game's fielding is intuitive enough, with fielders moving in the area you push the buttons in and each direction button mocking the diamond setup (up is second base, down is home, etc.). Players can fake a throw, or hit the cut off man, too. Unfortunately, all fielders are hampered by frame rate stutters that are relative easy to ignore. The game's best feature is its on-the-fly pitcher and defensive strategies status bar, which pops up by hitting R2. This is an excellent, utilitarian access mode that doesn't stop gameplay when initiated and enables players to check on the pitcher's status, the area each ball has been thrown in, whether he's looking good, tired, in great shape, etc. By using this players can also change defensive strategies, too.
While Interplay calls the graphics high-res, it looks more like medium-high res to us, which is still a good thing. The players are crisp looking and tightly designed. Another great addition is the smooth motion captured movements that are fleshed out in hordes of fielding animation sequences, dozens of batting stances, including at least 20 major favourites. Some of the great animations we liked included slide catches in the outfield, jumping throws from the infield (however gratuitous they were), and waving off other fielders for a fly ball catch.
Interplay Sports' Baseball 2000 is a contender. It's a straight no-frills baseball game that blends a little arcade and a little realism to make an overall impressive title. I had fun playing it, and didn't take too long to get the hang of its many aspects. The biggest disappointment appears in the sound department, where the feeling is hampered by a bizarre, surrealistic quiet that isn't like any game I've been to.
