I rented All Star Baseball 2002 by Acclaim as everything I’ve read thus far puts it ahead of the other two baseball sims available on the market, but let’s hope the reviews I’ve read were wrong, because there’s not much here that I liked about the game.

I will note that I’m writing this review after playing it for an hour and a half against my roommate. To be fair (and also to get my money’s worth from renting the game), I’ll dive into the game again tomorrow morning, but initially I was pretty appalled at the product that Acclaim has released here.

As soon as we finished playing, I sat down and wrote up the good and the bad about this game, and found I had trouble finding much good in this game.

One thing that I liked a lot and my roommate liked very little was the batting and pitching. The batting is a lot different than Triple Play was on the PSX. (I’ve yet to play Triple Play for the PS2, but think that’ll be one of my next reviews). While other games tend to make hitting overly easy, this sways a little too much in the other direction, but I think it’s a good thing. Rather than swing high, mid or low, you have total control in two axis and you get an idea via the pitching cursor where the ball is starting out and then as it approaches the plate. I applaud Acclaim for this interface and I think with a little practice, this control scheme would be my interface of choice for my baseball sims.

That being said, the rest of the game is garbage. The controls are lame. Partially Blockbuster’s fault, we didn’t have a manual, but the base throwing is different and it seems it’s different simply to be different. Every baseball game out there PSX, PC, NES, whatever used the control pad and a button to throw — down and X to throw home, left and A to throw to third, or something similar. ASB 2002 uses X, Triangle, O and Square as the base throwing. After being trained since back in the 8-bit days to use the control pad, using the buttons seems unnatural. Had using the buttons given some advantage or speed increase, Acclaim would be revolutionary, but just to be different to be different is lame.

Eventually one could get used to their control scheme for that, but there are more controlling woes. Another unwritten rule is the fact that Triangle is used to back out of menus. This is true for 99% of American games out there. Acclaim uses O to back out of menus, which is more the standard in Japanese games, but Acclaim, this is the United States. Again, this is a little thing, but it’s just another annoyance.

My real lament here is the game doesn’t feel like the PS2. I pulled up Triple Play 2000 for the PSX and yeah, textures, characters and shadows are head-and-shoulders above the PSX stuff, but I’ve seen Madden and SSX. The PS2 can do more than what ASB 2002 is doing!

The animations in the game felt very amateurish. A fly ball to the warning track had my roommate settling under the ball. It looked decent, but he had no control. I’ve got to vote for total control over pretty animations. Also, in terms of the outfield, there was some noticeable blur/jitter-type distortion when the fielder threw back to the infield — unacceptable in anything but a beta version of a game.

Additionally, a grounder to second and then the routine throw to first never looked routine. Every time, the second baseman wound up to throw, he faced toward home, making me fear I had accidentally told him to throw home. Magically, the ball would throw to first though. There’s no excuse for animation like that with present-day technology.

Another thing that should be long forgotten in present-day gaming systems is crappy commentary. The commentary was reminiscent of Hardball 3 back in the day for the PC. There’s no color or any real chatter. A lot of the sentences sounded pieced together and I can’t remember hearing anything that bad since back in the days of 286 computers.

Overall, this game is lame. Once I play it more, and also check out Triple Play for the PS2, I will consider revising my opinions, but based on my first play, I don’t think I’ll be getting a Playstation 2 baseball sim until at least next season.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2002 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Game Reviews, Gaming, PS2 Review, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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