All-Star Baseball 2004

Written by John Scalzo  on April 04, 2003

Review: Three strikes and you're out!

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There's something about the sport of baseball that causes people to wax nostalgic for hours on end. It's different for every person but it's always there. For some it's the field, for some it's that perfect pitch that totally fools the batter, for a lot of people it's a majestic home run that you know is gone as soon as it leaves the bat. Baseball is a game that knows it's history. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about it's video game rendition in All-Star Baseball 2004. The All-Star Baseball series used to stand as the absolute pinnacle of sports video games. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

All-Star Baseball 2004 has many things going for it. You can see that for yourself as soon as you first load up the game. It opens with the end of Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech and then moves into a montage of some of the greatest baseball moments of the next seventy years with Smash Mouth's "All Star" being played over it. Then the theme to The Natural swells as we move to the menus of the game itself which are navigated by moving through a virtual Major League clubhouse. The presentation is fantastic, this is a video game that captures perfectly that feeling people get when they talk about baseball. This is reinforced ten times over as you dig deeper and deeper into the extras.

However once you take the field, All-Star Baseball 2004's flaws take the field with you. To put it simply: the fielding engine is terrible. The first major problem is that the "Future Throw" returns with a vengeance. The Future Throw requires you to choose which base you want to throw the ball to by pressing the corresponding face button before you field the ball. Most of the time you're too busy concentrating on catching the ball and if you don't pick a base the computer throws it home. The computer baserunners will then sneak extra bases on you. This is the same problem All-Star Baseball 2003 had last year and Acclaim has completely ignored it. But amazingly they've made it worse. The fielders in All-Star Baseball 2004 move slower than your average senior citizen. So forget just trying to remember to pick what base you're going to throw it to, you also have to pray the fielder will actually catch the ball.

The pitching and batting interfaces also return unchanged, you still have to line up a cursor with the incoming pitch to hit, except for one tiny thing. Sportscenter anchors often say "the hardest thing to do is hit a baseball." Well Acclaim has taken them up on this challenge and made hitting a baseball in All-Star Baseball 2004 an almost impossible task. Even slower knuckleballs come in at lightning speed and if you're in a matchup against a power pitcher like Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, or Kerry Wood then forget it, they're practically unhittable. Yes this is incredibly realistic, but is it fun? Not at all. Acclaim has included several different batting options in addition to the standard cursor. There's the Classic cursor that was used in All-Star Baseball '99. There's also options for Zone hitting and Timed hitting that just require the player to press X when the ball is over the plate. Even these simplified systems make hitting difficult due to the speed of the pitch.

While the on field problems bog the game down, All-Star Baseball 2004 features so many different modes and extras that you can honestly go hours without ever picking up a bat. For starters All-Star Baseball 2004 has the deepest Franchise mode ever. Even without playing the game you can take on the GM role and micromanage nearly every part of your team. It's truly a stat lover's dream. To add an extra layer to Franchise mode there's also the Expansion mode. Create a team from scratch, choose their mascot, choose their stadium, draft their players. It's as close to owning a Major League franchise as most of us will ever get.

Like I said before, the extras of All-Star Baseball 2004 really enhance the presentation of the game. All you have to do is check out the Multimedia section to see that. Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken give short talks on various subjects and then to hear Negro League legend Buck O'Neil talk about the game I love is just amazing. It's required viewing for any serious baseball fan and a great addition to this game.

Other extra modes include a full fledged two player Trivia Game, the Scenario Mode, that allows you to recreate moments from the 2002 season, and the Pick-Up Game. The Pick-Up game puts 18 players in jeans and t-shirts and throws them on a sandlot, a schoolyard, or The Field of Dreams to play a game of baseball the way it was meant to be played. Again, the presentation is outstanding.

The graphics and sound come off fairly similar to how they did in last year's game. The players and the stadiums are incredibly detailed, but the fielders leave a lot to be desired. The little touches to the players are nice, like Barry Bonds has his earring. Or just little baseball things, like seeing the umpire appeal to first base. And many of the stadiums have their own little quirks, like the waterfall at Kauffman Stadium or the planes taking off in the background at Shea. These little details are great, but the fielders look like the were plucked straight from a Super NES game, there's no detail (or much of anything) in them at all.

Just like last year, commentary is provided by Thom Brennamen and Steve "Psycho" Lyons. And while there commentary is good, it just seems to be lacking that extra bit that would make it great. Some things don't sound right and other things sound perfect. It's really a mixed bag. Maybe I just miss the quirkiness of All-Star Baseball 2000's commentary. Also fun for a few laughs is the included Spanish Play-by-Play. I can't really comment on how accurate it is, because 11th grade Spanish class has totally vacated my memory by now, but it's a nice little bonus.

All-Star Baseball 2004 stands out much better with it's musical selections. In addition to the previously mentioned theme from The Natural and "All Star" is House of Pain's "Jump Around" and tons of organ music. It all sounds great and just makes All-Star Baseball 2004 feel more like baseball. The sound effects are your varied assortment of bats hitting baseballs, crowd noises, and such. But each special stadium touch also comes with sound so when a plane flies overhead at Shea you are going to hear it. And bonus points to Acclaim for including a "shattered bat" sound effect.

Finally, what would a review of an All-Star Baseball game be without a discussion of glitches? Fans have come to expect glitches as, just like roaches, whenever one is squashed, two rise up to take it's place. And this year is no different. Among the more bothersome problems this year are a glitch that loads the default options set when the player attempts to load a custom options set. Or if you trade a player in season mode they sometimes will disappear from that season completely. And while this last one isn't technically a glitch it's still shoddy programming that hampers the game. Oftentimes in the field when throwing a ball in from the outfield to the infield the game will momentarily freeze. Just come to a dead stop, load something, and then keep going. It makes the fielding feel very jerky and should have been ironed out when the game was being play tested.