MVP Baseball 2004

MAY 24, 2004

After owning and playing this game for over a month, I'm ready to give it a proper review. I should note that I tend to play the game in dynasty mode, so reviewing this game any earlier would have been premature.

Overall, this is the best baseball game I have ever played. The statistics are fairly deep and the gameplay is intuitive. I especially like the pitching system. I wanted to get the good stuff out of the way at the start because you should know this is an excellent baseball game that is definitely worth buying. The rest of this review will look at things that are missing and mistakes made by EA Sports.

My biggest complaint is the jump in difficulty between Pro and All-Star. At the Pro level I am able to keep my opponent to under two runs and five hits and score plently of runs without much effort. At All-Star, they often have ten hits by the middle of the game and I continually strike out. Not good. Additionally, the game has alot of glitches. A dozen times the computer would field a ground ball and then just stand in place. It didn't make much sense. Finally, I've had some trouble fielding and baserunning. It may just be a tough learning curve on those.

In terms of missing features, I'm mostly looking for more control over my stats. I find it's hard to figure out who's hot or cold. It would be helpful if I could look at their stats over just the last five, ten or fifteen games. I would like to have the date customizable, but that would likely make my save file unnecessarily large. I'm guessing that a built-in hard drive would solve all of these problems. It would also be nice to have a dynasty option where I don't have to worry about my minor league teams. If I want to be truly successful, I'd have to really manage my minor league teams, but I don't want to put in quite that much effort.

My 'B' rating is relative to what baseball games are capable of. The graphics are great and there are a million other wonderful things, but it's still not complete. If I was comparing it to what's available today, I'd give it an 'A'.

Posted in Game at 9:04 pm.