I figured this thread need to be started. I will have my copy at lunch. Here is some snippets from another board:
One thing that I'm really stoked on now is that with some minor tweaking of sliders, I felt like I was able to get a game that feels much more realistic as far as batting average, hits per game and overall score. 2k3 was much easier on difficult levels than this years game. You can really tweak how good and aggressive the AI is.
Miller sounds awesome to me. When you hear him calling the game and see the ESPN ticker across the bottom, it feels very authentic.
If you liked last years game, you will like this years game. It really feels like a good natural progression of the game. Sure there are features from ASB and MVP I'd like, but as an overall game I'd rate this as the best of the 3 (xbox) again. While some may think MVP is better, I'll say this, the players in ESPN play much more like their real counterparts than the MVP ones do. I didn't have Jay Payton going yard on me 4 times in one game and the lefties can take one out of the park. So for what I'm looking for in a baseball game, ESPN is superior.
Just got mine at EB. Unfortunately, I won't be able to play it for a few more hours.
But they had it running at the store and I watched and listened to it for a while. The stadiums are a bit better, the faces as people have said, are better and worse depending on how you view them.
But Miller is indeed impressive. ASB still has the baseball chatter down to a science, but from what I've heard, as far as calling the action, I haven't heard better than this.
Picked mine up but have only had a chance to play 1 inning. Right off the bat though I can tell that this game is much better than last years. Here's the things that jumped out at me.
Good:
The pitches look MUCH better coming to the plate and don't look choppy at all. The pitches have break on them as well. This is all on the Real setting btw.
The expanded strike zone from last season seems to be fixed. Still early but I saw a couple close ones called balls.
Pitching is tough. It might get easier when I get used to it but I'm getting deep into counts.
Bad:
Player clipping. This is just cosmetic but it does take away from the immersion when you see the first baseman walk right through the retired batter on his way back to the dugout after the third out. I can definitely live with this though.
Will check the game out more and will post more impressions when I actually get a chance to dive deeper into the game.
Very early impressions are that this could be the best of the bunch this year and I was truly not expecting that. 10 times better than the demo version btw.
I am a patient boy.
I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait.
My time is water down a drain.
Add me to the "I have the game but am stuck at work" list. Can't cut out early, as I have a presentation with the CEO this afternoon. Just 3 more hours and I'll be on my way home. Best part is, the kidlets are at grandmas house, so I can play a game or two before picking them up
I do have 1 impression so far. The manual sucks. Its very thin, and half of it is credits, blank pages for notes (Has anyone EVER used these?), and ads. Not much meat in there, so there went the hope I could get some info from it at lunch.
Some of us stayed home sick today (but were healthy enough to hit my local gamestop, funny how that works). okay, i will do my best but i'm not a great reviewer. This is after two games, one NY vs. BOS-me (4-3 me with hits in favor of the Sox 12-7. Pedro had 10 K's in 8 innings. The other the USA vs. Dominican Republic. 8-2 CPU. Faced Pedro this time and man, he is nasty. Hits were 13 or 14 for them and only 6 for me. BTW, i changed no settings so i imagine things will only get better later.
Pitching: Very smooth. Pitches look great from both behind the catcher and in pitcher view. Balls break where and when they should and i felt like i could pick up a fastball or breaking pitch as it approached. Also, they have really taken time to create a pitcher's signature style and motion, to the point where they have Pedro's straightening of his left leg when he comes set in the stretch. The power pitching has yet to show me much of a difference when used versus not used, except that it depletes energy faster. I'm sure it affects the pitch, but i haven't paid close enough attention to that yet.
Batting: I'm still evaluating the true aim hitting. Out of the box i'm making contact with too many balls, IMO. I did see slider settings that can fix this BUT, the variety of hits and foul balls are solid. Looping singles, choppers, line drives to the gap, etc. Certainly did not feel as though i was seeing the same thing over and over. One complaint i have is that swings and misses in this game look awful in the sense that the swing looks choppy, short and too quick. However, when contact is made they look fine. Minor complaint if at all. As expected, batting stances are right on target.
Fielding: Not much to say here. The usual. I did notice the player clipping that was mentioned before, and it is silly looking, but didn't bother me that much. Once thing i found very cool was on a hot shot i hit down the third base line. Aramis Ramirez dove, but landed on his knees as though he realized mid-dive that he didn't need to lay out totally. Snagged the liner, landed on all fours, and popped up with a throw to first to try and get my runner there. It looks very sweet. On fly balls, once your get to the circle there is a cut away and it's like auto pilot unti the ball hits the glove. Not sure if this can be turned off yet.
And Beyond: Miller is terrific. Only one bobble when i hit a ground ball and he said "popped it up, he's under it for the out". In two games that was the only hiccup.
-Stadiums look great
-First person is fun to try out, but after about three innings it grew old and i wanted to return to normal view.
All in all, i like it a lot, of course i liked last years. Again, i'm not the best reviewer, but if anyone has specific quesitons, fire away and i'll do my best to answer them. Look forward to all of your critiques as well. Oh, crap, wife coming, better run back into bed.........cough cough.
Remember fatpitcher said if you are experienced with baseball games at all, you should immediately put the game on one of the two harder difficulty levels if you use the new hitting option or it is too easy to make contact. That has me worried, because a lot of guys are really good with these games and it might just be too easy even with sliders. We'll see.
I played one game so far, but here are a few quick impressions:
1st inning...Cards(me) vs. Seattle.
Ichiro leads off with a hit. Steals second on the 2nd pitch then tags and moves to third on a fly ball to deep right. Next batter hits a fly to center and Ichiro tags and scores. That's awesome! You won't see too many games with AI that "manufactures" runs like that.
Graphics- I think they are better than we have been led to believe...maybe it's just me, but I think the graphics look better than both MVP and ASB.
Announcing- Top notch. Jon Miller makes this game feel like baseball...this is more a plus than Vin Scully was to MLB 2005.
Fielding feels great...no sluggishness at all like in MVP when you move your outfielders to a fly ball. In this game the only way the AI gets a triple is if it earns it.
Swing animations are as bad as advertised, but it really doesn't bother me
Contrary to what we were led to believe, there is no roster update on Live as of 1:00 PM.
The rosters themselves are not as up to date as I would have liked and who in the hell is Gallardo starting at first for the Cardinals? The good news is it's really easy to move players around as well as edit them.
Here are a couple of little irritations. The distance from home to the pitcher seems closer than it should. I don't know how to say it, but it's not that the ball is moving too fast, but that it looks like it might be 46 ft instead of 60. I guess that is just from being used to MVP.
The other thing was I hit a couple of grounders that were fairly deep, but definite outs and my guys were safe. I was playing on pro so that may have been why. I'm going to play another game on ALL STar in a few minutes.
Haven't tried a steal yet but I'm going to do that as well.
I snuck out at lunch and picked it up. I was able to play it for a few hours. Ok here we go with my quick thoughts:
- Karl Ravech gives a nice intro to the game
- FMV sequence at beginning of game is fantastic
- Started a Franchise on Allstar
- Many, many gameplay options including option to turn off power pitching, and power swing (yes!)
- Before the game starts you see the division standings while Karl previews the game - awesome - he is very specific - talked about opening day, lmy 2nd game he talked about friday night in Puerto Rico - he even busted out some spanish!
- My 2nd batter Reyes walked, Floyd had a 9 pitch at bat - I am loving this game.
- check swings are harder but still there
- you can actually get back with extended leads this year
- Jon Miller is amazing - best play by play ever imo
- The ticker went on to the espn - da na na ... da na na - I got chills
- During the game I got an NL leaders overlay - nice touch
- Presentation is outstanding
- AI runners were very aggressive - shallow fly ball to cameron, furcal on 2nd, Giles on 1st - Giles goes a little more than halfway, I try to nail him at 1st and Furcal took 3rd, everyone was safe. CPU tagged from third on a fly, took doubles and a triple off me, scored from 2nd on a single - everything looked good.
- Sliders galore - and they work well!!!
- Hitting power
- Baserunning speed
- Stealing success
- Pitching control
- Pitcher fatigue rate
- Catcher errors
- Infield errors
- Outfield errors
- Hitting contact
- Hitting skill
- Hitting power
- Take strike ahead/behind/overall
- Take ball ahead/behind/overall
- Baserunning aggressiveness
- Steal second freq.
- Steal third freq.
- Throw strikes ahead/behind/overall
- work corners freq.
- change speeds freq.
- change locations freq.
- pickoff
- pitchout
- catching aggr.
- throwing aggr.
- hit 'n' run freq
- sac bunt freq.
- squeeze play freq.
- injuries
- I tried putting throw strikes sliders to 1 and 3 of my first four batters walked - hoorah !!!
- Strike zone is smaller - seems perfect so far
- I like the confidence meter
- stealing seems fixed - Reyes was 2 for 2 but Cameron was 0-for 2 - there is a slider for this if it needs fixing
- Hampton left the game with shoulder tendinitis after throwing about 75 pitches
- I love the true aim batting system - it is the HH system with a better physics model. I k'd plenty at the allstar level - 13 times! In fact I think the pitch speed at real is too fast for me right now. I slowed it down a little and got very good results.
- saw some offline thows and errors
- hit an HR off the scoreboard - there was collision detection
- fielding model is much more difficult and interesting
- low wide is a great batting view - they added many new views
- variable pitching is more refined this year - it is more variable at default but all over the place not just down the middle or way off the plate. In fact it works so well I even put the pitching cursor on for my 2nd game. You rarely throw the ball exactly where you aim it. And as your confidence and endurance go down it is hard to even come close.
Everything looked great. I could go on for awhile. I was very impressed overall. I saw no issues that concerned me whatsoever.
If you have any questions I will do my best to answer them.
Last edited by snate on Wed Apr 07, 2004 4:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Ok, I still am enjoying ASB, but I've yet to hear anything that would make me regret buying this game. Reviews are worthless so it wouldn't surprise me if this ends of being the most popular game among DS users.
Like Parker, I'm enjoying ASB...But, I picked up ESPN this afternoon and will post a complete side-by-side comparison tomorrow. I'm mostly looking forward to online play, as I feel ASB is lacking in that area.
So far what I am hearing makes me glad that I have yet to buy any of the baseball games. However, I am still expecting the now too familiar DSP turning of the tides.
So much for that OS guy's impressions who said he didn't feel compelled to play more than one game at a time. If the gameplay is improved from last year, I fail to see how that can be the case.
"However, I am still expecting the now too familiar DSP turning of the tides."
So am I....so am I. It's still to early and new. Give it a couple more hours.
I do have a question if anyone would be so kind as to answer.
I'm hearing the batting interface is being compared to HH. I'm sure many of you are in heaven. However, more than one person said it seems pre-determined as to where the ball is going to go. For example, if you have a runner on third with one out and want to attempt to hit a sac fly, you really don't have any control of hitting the ball in the air. It could very easily be a grounder to the right side of the infield, etc. Whereas in MVP, you could press up to hit the ball in the air and down to hit it on the ground. Is this a correct assumption in terms of ESPN's batting interface?
sportdan30 wrote:
I'm hearing the batting interface is being compared to HH. I'm sure many of you are in heaven. However, more than one person said it seems pre-determined as to where the ball is going to go. For example, if you have a runner on third with one out and want to attempt to hit a sac fly, you really don't have any control of hitting the ball in the air. It could very easily be a grounder to the right side of the infield, etc. Whereas in MVP, you could press up to hit the ball in the air and down to hit it on the ground. Is this a correct assumption in terms of ESPN's batting interface?
Yes I am in heaven ... You CANNOT control where the ball goes ... You swing the bat and the timing and bat to ball placement determine where the ball goes. It is not predetermined at all. You control the batters actions - not the results. Obviously the batters ratings have some influence on the result of the swing as well.
I assume cursor batting would give you the ability to get the ball up into the air in that situation if you position the cursor correctly, making it a matter of your skill and execution rather than simply pressing up.
So, is that neccessarily good or bad? Without having played it, I would think it tends to take a bit of the "control" away from the user, and makes it more random.
It is not random - your actions influence the result. Swing under the ball and you hit a fly. Swing early and you pull the ball.
I would think it tends to take a bit of the "control" away from the user, and makes it more random."
Anyone who has ever stepped in a batters box before knows that no matter who you are, you do not "control" where the ball goes. You try to influence the result with your swing.
Last edited by snate on Wed Apr 07, 2004 5:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Well, I think many hitters do change their swing path if they need to hit the ball the opposite way for instance, although most of the big hr and rbi guys really don't.
Thanks for the clarification. It does make perfect sense the way in which you described it. I haven't played a HH game in probably over a year so it's difficult for me to remember how the batting interface worked. But I can clearly see what you mean in terms of swinging early or late.
