MVP Baseball 2004
Posted April 11th, 2004 @ 02:15pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I bought MVP Baseball 2004 for the GameCube based on a numbe of positive reviews. I should have read more reviews. Ugh, this game is annoying.
To start, you must play a "franchise" just to play a season of baseball. I don't want to manage the Pittsburgh Pirates for 10 years - I just want to play my way through a regular season (and maybe some postseason action). That's it. The game is a memory pig - I don't think that all of the options would fit on a standard card, and true of most GameCube games, the damn thing can't look at slot B!
You can't warm up a pitcher while you're at bat. That's ridiculous. Fielding is silly - the opposing team's outfielders leap and dive at least ten times a game, robbing me of hits, yet my outfielders act as if they're afraid the baseball is radioactive.
Hitting is weak - you can attempt to hit "better" by moving the stick in the direction of the ball, but Acclaim's "aimer" thing works ten times better (especially when you can toggle between power and contact hitting modes). EA's attempt is weak and really takes all of the fun - and strategy - out of hitting.
If I were reviewing this game, I'd give it a 5. It looks nice, it plays fairly well, it's got a lot of options, but it's just too damn annoying (or completely wrong in the case of my bullpen management!).
Donate Life
Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 4:09pm #
Personally I don't think any baseball game has been fun since the NES days. Game companies have focused too much on superb graphics rather than superb gameplay.
Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 4:34pm #
I played an absolutely marvelous baseball game on my Dreamcast. I nearly kept the game for game alone. It was a Japanese game and now that SegaWeb.com has completely gone bye bye, I've got no way of determining the name again.
Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 9:58pm #
I've always been annoyed by the whole "business" feature of the current crop of sports games too. When I buy Madden, I don't want to think about the salary cap. I just want to play. The most I want to do in terms of business is make trades and create my own player for shits and giggles.
I'm disappointed that you didn't like the game. I was hoping it was going to be good.
Any chance I can borrow it? 😛
Posted 11 Apr 2004 at 11:11pm #
You can come over and play it. I'm tweaking the settings as much as possible to try to create some realism. I should have bought All-Star Baseball though. Just one question about that though: why the fuck are they at 2005? That's ridiculous.
Posted 12 Apr 2004 at 1:22pm #
You can warmup pitchers while at bat, at least on the PS2. L2 brings up the bullpen menu.
MVP does have an interesting NES-level mode. While in the franchise mode, you can choose to play the whole game, quickly simulate the game or use the Manage mode.
In manage mode, you don't control each batter, you just have a selection of strategies. Swing away, bunt, sacrifice, etc... Pitching is the same: Pitch to, Pitch around, walk, etc... A full game can be played in under a minute.
Posted 12 Apr 2004 at 11:05pm #
Interesting, GameInformer magazine gave good marks to MVP Baseball 2004.
You may wanna read that article if you can at your local library (GameStop store).