All Star Baseball 2003 Review

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(More customer reviews)General/Summary: This is quite possibly one of the best looking baseball games that I have ever played and the gameplay goes hand in hand with it. At first I thought that this was just another mediocre baseball game but then I started to realize what this game is about. The detail in this game is amazing, the options and extras are very nice because it adds alot more life to this game. I'm sure the only reason anyone would read this is to find out if it is better than High Heat 2003 or Triple Play(ugh), well I used to own High Heat 2002 and I have the demo of 2003 and I would say that without a doubt All Star Baseball is better. In HH(the demo) it was way to easy to strike the opposing batters out, and i'm guessing that anyone who knows any kind of pitching strategy could easily win with 20+ k's. All in all All Star Baseball is actually more of a sim than High Heat
Gameplay: The gameplay is great. It reminded me of the MLB series from 989 for the Playstation. When you choose your pitch each button is assigned to a certain pitch, so x might be fastball and square might be change-up.(each pitcher has the right pitches that he has in real life) Then you would move the cursor to where you want in or out of the strike zone and press x to throw it. You can also throw pick-offs too first, second, and third,, simply by pressing the corresponding button, and you can also do a mid-windup pick-off which I was quite pleased with. All you have to do is wait till the pitcher is half way through his windup then you press the base, which base he's able to throw to depends on if he's a right hander of a left hander. If the batter hits the pitch then you move your fielder to the red circle and wait for him to catch it. If it's a ground ball you have two options. You can go to the circle and let him pick it up and then throw or you can push the base button before he has the ball to make one fluid play. This is referred to in the manual as "future throw". There is also two ways to bat in this game, you can use the easy batting or the regular batting. The regular batting is where you have a cursor and you try and line it up with the ball cursor, you can tilt the cursor to hit pop-ups or grounders or pull it or go with it. Then there's the easy batting which is just like high heat, you just time it right and swing. This is what I used because I find the batting cursor too hard. You can also guess the pitches on regular batting. If you guess right your cursor gets bigger and the opposite happens if you guess wrong. There are also player cards in this game which is quite fun. Basically you get points for doing things like a double-play and you buy packs containing six cards. The more cards you have the more cheats you unlock, it's really fun. If you're an arcade fan then play this game on rookie and pitch like you don't know the difference between a fastball and change-up, but if you're a sim fan then just use the right strategy, you might want to play on a harder level, but I played a one to nothing game on rookie so I actually think that this is more of a simulation than High Heat 2003
Graphics: These graphics are amazing, the stadiums are very accurate, and the actual field very much resembles the real field. It seems like they've used the 3D cyber-scan on every player because pretty much all of them look like their real life counterparts. You can know who someone is just by looking at their back because of their body build. The animations are also very good, when you're fielding a ground ball you see the player catching it, bringing it up to his chest then starting to throw it just like in real life. Every know and then you will notice the ball magically going to the player even though he's two feet away from it but it doesn't happen very often, and when it does it's not that distracting. My favorite part is the replays, you can't do a manual replay but there is one for every play, and it's simply amazing. When you hit a line drive and you see the ball flying by the people in the crowd you can't help but feeling that it's real. Speaking of the crowd, they're just your typical videogame crowd, flat paper like, but they do move and if you see them straight on then they look quite good.
Sound: I have heard better but not much. The announcers are almost always right and they'll usually tell you the stats of the player from last season in his first at bat. I remeber I was the Blue Jays and I was playing the Yankees and Carlos Delgado hit a game winning home run in the 11th inning. The next game the announcer said "He came up big yesterday with a homerun to win it." I was astonished to hear it. The crowd reacts nicely to what's going on. In the later innings they'll get louder if it's close or if it's a blowout they'll quite down. If a big play is made they'll get louder for the appropriate amount of time and then quite down again. Basically they react to the situations very well. I'm pleased that the sound doesn't take anything away from this game, although it doesn't add that much. I hope this helps in your decision.

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All-Star Baseball 2003 features all-new player models created with 3D CyberScan technology for one of the most realistic representations of player faces ever seen. There are also 10 game modes for greater replay depth. Modes include exhibition, season, career, franchise, expansion, All-Star Game, series, manager, home-run derby, and batting practice. Franchise mode allows users to play as and build their favorite teams for up to 20 consecutive seasons. All-new expansion play lets you choose a city, stadium, and team logo and add that team to the major leagues. And the expansion draft lets you draft from a pool of unprotected players and build a team from free agents and minor leaguers.
The game features a three-man broadcast booth with Bob Brenly, Thom Brennaman, and Steve Lyons providing in-depth commentary. The Cooperstown Hall of Fame team features sluggers from the past such as Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, and Yogi Berra. All 30 major-league teams and more than 900 players are represented, all with official stadiums, logos, and uniforms. All-Star Baseball 2003 has more than 50 stadiums from which to choose, including eight classic stadiums and 10 expansion stadiums.

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