Baseball gamers seem to have something in common with Red Sox and Cubs fans – we always think that next year will bring baseball nirvanna. Last year EA turned in a fairly impressive offering with MVP Baseball 2003. Knowing that it could only get better, there are high expectations on the 2004 edition. Will it live up to our dreams?
Graphics: 86
As usual, the player models are fantastic. You can recognize your favorite stars just from how they are rendered, though Johnny Damon is not quite authentic. It's hard to get that homeless person look in a baseball game, I guess. The batting stances are quite well done and you will again recognize your favorites.
I was a bit disappointed by the stadiums. The crowd still seems very flat. I was also surprised to see all the bright red shirts at a Cubs game. It would appear that the crowd is generic no matter where you are. They are an improvement over the circles and trapezoids that used to grace ballpark stands, but they still lack a certain amount of life.
I was also surprised to see a blue wall at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I'm not sure where that came from, but clearly it is wrong.
There is something that is just not quite right about the animation. It feels like we're missing a few frames on some of them. There is just a certain lack of fluidity that I didn't like about it. There's nothing that looks unrealistic so much as they just don't seem very fluid.
I played a few games with the Red Sox and was happily surprised to see Nomar's signature arm-whip when he throws to first. Then I realized that all infielders on the left side do this. Also, preloading a throw will make the infielder throw flat-footed. This isn't something you see Major League infielders do too often. If it appears that they threw flat-footed it is because they took their stride as they transferred the ball to their glove. MVP 2004 kind of misses on this one.
Of course, these are all very small nits to pick in a game with otherwise very good graphics. They aren't as sharp as what you'll see in other titles, but they are impressive nonetheless.
Audio: 90
Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow return for another season of action. I guess you may have to be a Giants fan to appreciate Krukow's frequent use of terms like “meat” and “big boy”. Believe it or not, he's like this in real life. Style preferences aside, they both keep up with the action very well, though sometimes Kuiper predicts a ball will split the outfielders and then someone makes a fairly routine running catch.
I noticed a bug with the stadium announcer. I had Jeremy Giambi playing DH (his natural position) and yet he was announced as a left fielder when he came up to bat. This is because that is what he is listed as on the roster. This is clearly a bug, but a pretty small one as you almost have to be looking for it to notice it.
Otherwise, everything sounds like a ballgame. Regional sounds are also prevalent. I heard a vendor selling crabcakes in Baltimore, for example. The crowd boos appropriately. They really don't appreciate it when you make multiple throws over to first to hold a runner close. Again, the crack of the bat still isn't quite right, but is it ever?
Interface: 90
There is so much to love about the way EA lets you control the action. You can control the type of slide for a baserunner using the right analog stick, for example. And this really does help. I had a runner hook-slide around a catcher to score a run even through the throw beat him. I was quite impressed by this.
Everything returns from last year. Pitching is still reminiscent of how hitting a golf ball in video games used to be. What's very clever is that everything moves faster when pitching out of the set to simulate the lack of accuracy. Be careful when you bring in an opposite-handed reliever though. I was a bit thrown off when I didn't immediately realize that the pitching interface reversed itself for a lefty. It also changes its angle on the screen based on the way your pitcher delivers the ball.
There are a variety of sliders to tweak the game. They are also extremely granular. You can adjust various options from -50 to +50. I'm not sure if you'll really see much of a difference between +28 and +29, for example, but it's cool that they are there.
I just wish that there were sliders to fix some of the more glaring problems I have with the gameplay. More on that below. Of course, there may actually be a slider for what I want to tweak, but I can't tell from the paltry manual that came with the game.
Initially I wrote a scathing criticism of the fact that you can't warm up relivers while your team is on offense. However, there are two ways to do it, though not that intuitive. First, you can use the L1 menu to quickly get to your pen or make any other sub. Or you can go into your roster through the normal menu you use to pinch hit or pinch run. The point is that it can be done, but you have to kind of know what you're looking for.
Gameplay: 80
Again, this is hard to rate because there are things to like and a few things to really hate. EA seemed to fix the fly ball problem. You will get a variety of balls hit by both the CPU and by you. And you can strike the CPU out now too, provided you hit your spots and use a good pitcher. I didn't have too much trouble getting Ks with Pedro or Curt Schilling. I didn't get as many as they would in real life, but I also think I throw too many strikes.
Strikes are really where the gameplay begins to break down. The CPU seems to throw too many of them until the pitcher gets tired. Perhaps the problem is just that I don't have enough bat control to foul off the bad strikes and wait out the pitcher. It felt like I had to put too many balls into play though.
I know that there has yet to be a video game where you get an authentic number of pitches. But in MVP 2004 it is not that hard to have a sub-10 pitch inning. This reminds me of some of the bad old High Heat days. Playing at MVP difficulty mitigates this somwhat, but then you have to tune the game to make it playable.
Fielding is done with good intentions. The momentum of the fielder will affect the throw. The problem is that I feel like it is overdone. A shortstop taking two steps to his right to field a ball doesn't have to keep running until he's deep in the hole before releasing the ball. But that is what seems to happen in MVP 2004. As a result you end up with some infield hits that would typically be outs. It also is very hard to start a 4-6-3 double play if your second baseman has to go to his left to field the ball. In general, you will find yourself yelling at your fielders to get the ball out of their mitts. You can somewhat compensate for this with the “Throw Speed” slider, but then all you have is a very strange looking play where the infielder holds the ball for a while then throws a bullet across the infield a la Shawon Dunston during his SS days with the Cubs.
The biggest flaw in the gameplay is something that you really only see if you play a number of games. DSP has documented a bug in the power shown by lefties and righties. You can read more about it here. We will leave it up to you to decide if this is a show-stopper.
EA maintains that lefties can still hit plenty of home runs, but they won't travel the cartoonish distances seen by righties. I probably could live with this bug if I had a way to tune the fielding.
The dynasty mode is extremely rich. You have to worry about things like player chemistry. You can put players on a trading block so that other teams can shop for them. And putting them on the trading block may even increase their morale. Games are rated differently depending on the matchup. Beating the Yankees does more for the morale of the Red Sox than beating the Orioles.
It also is very interesting that you can play games for your AA and AAA teams. You also can choose to “Manage” games, but really it is a very flat way of presenting the action. Rather than getting pitch-by-pitch detail you merely get a very short text description of what happened. Still, it is nice that you can sim the games and still have some control over what happens.
It also is nice that you can let the CPU help you with various parts of the game. Don't want to mess with the fancy new slides? Turn them off. Have problems tracking those hot shots in the hole? Let the CPU pick them and then you choose where to throw (my personal preference). However, doing this will rob you of the chance to use the right analog stick to leap or dive for balls.
Overall: 86
I really wanted to like this game more than I do. But it still doesn't feel quite right in the field. I liken this a bit to Out of the Park when you play games out. All the stuff behind the scenes is excellent, but when you get down to brass tacks it leaves you somewhat lacking. And although the importance of ball physics is impressive, the bug is something that EA really needs to get sorted out. Until this happens, the game is impressive, but cartoonish. You can have fun with it, but at the cost of hardcore realism.
