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(More customer reviews)I love baseball. As most baseball fans, I've dreamed of walking up to the plate with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth and crushing the game-winning home run. I'll never know this feeling in real life, of course, but that's what video games are for.
Last time I looked for a batting cage in my town, I found that almost every one close to me has closed down, and the ones that are still open are an hour away. And they cost a ton of money. The batting cages near my park cost $3 for 25 balls. Given the way I hit, the math comes out to about $0.75 for each time I make contact.
And so when I heard that Konami was working on a batting cage simulation for the Wii, which used the advanced motion gaming features of the Wii MotionPlus, I was excited. Could this experience come close to a real batting cage?
I have to admit. I love this game. But I love it because I approached it with the right expectations.
I'll start off by saying this game is very, very technical and very, very realistic in its approach. If you're the type who wants to just close your eyes, swing your bat with all your might, and hit towering home runs, this is not the game for you at all. In fact, you will find the game incredibly frustrating. For that, your best bet is still good ol' Wii Sports.
The Cages is a batting cage simulator. Nothing more, nothing less. You can't play a real game of baseball, you can't pitch, field, or run. You just stand in a cage and let a pitching maching throw to you.
The pitching machine will throw you up to 20 different types of pitches (from fastballs to sliders to curveballs to knuckleballs and changeups). As pitches are thrown at you, their motion and trajectory are very realistic, or at realistic as it can be on a two-dimensional TV screen. Just like the real thing, it's maddeningly difficult to hit a fastball after you've been served a bunch of breaking balls. The machine will throw at different speeds, and the virtual ball travels the virtual 60 feet, 6 inches in the exact same time it'd take on a real ballfield.
To prepare to hit the ball, you hold your Wii remote straight out at chest level and press and hold "B". To hit the ball, while holding down the "B" button, you swing. Sounds simple enough. But what's remarkable (and enervating) about this game is that it doesn't just take the timing of the swing into account. It takes your bat speed, the angle of your swing, your bat height, and the follow-through of your swing all into account, just like in real life. They say baseball is a game of inches. The Cages captures your swing accurately to the millimeter.
After each swing, the game will instantly show you a split-screen video showing your swing in slow motion from the top and the side. The game does an incredible job capturing the details of your swing in relation to the pitched ball. It is actually the single best implemention of Wii MotionPlus I've seen in a game yet.
The videos aren't just for show. You can actually analyze your swing and make adjustments. For example, once I kept fouling pitches off the plate. I could see clearly from the side view that while my swing was timed correctly, my swing was too high. Same thing happened when I started fouling pitches off to the right--I could see from the top view that my swing was too late. After making the adjustments, I was hitting again.
Probably like most people who first started up the game, I started out by trying to time my swings and swing for the fences. This resulted in me striking out time after time. But surprisingly, I was my most successful when I followed the fundamentals of hitting, things like keeping a loose grip on the "bat", shifting my weight from my back foot to my front foot while swinging, and having a smooth, level swing (it helped me when I visualized two things: a batting tee in front of me and the bat fully extended from my Wii remote).
Unlike most video games which provide instant gratification, this video game rewards you after you practice and practice the fundamentals, just like the real thing.
Was it realistic? Almost too much so. When I go to a batting cage, I typically strike out or foul off pitch after pitch and get unbearably frustrated. The exact same thing happened when I started up this game. But the difference is, after I watch the video replays and make the adjustments, eventually I start making contact (the "bling" sound effect doesn't provide quite the same satisfaction as the crack of a bat, but it's still a great feeling!)
There were, of course, things I wasn't too crazy about with this game, as other reviewers have pointed out:
1) It is aggravating to have to hold down the "B" button to swing. After a while, you learn to compensate for it, but it really messes with your ability to do the fundamentals.
2) The graphics and sounds are really very shoddy. I'm willing to overlook this, as whatever development resources they didn't put into the aethetics of the game, they did put into making a very realistic simulation.
The burning question, of course, is: will this game help you hit a real baseball? The answer is, yes and no. Swinging a plastic game controller doesn't feel at all like swinging a real baseball bat (although you can improve your arm strength by playing the game in conjunction with Riiflex Weights). And as much as a video image of a 99-MPH fastball is accurate, it's not the quite as seeing a real one buzzing by your head.
On the other hand, if you study and adhere to the fundamentals of hitting and use the in-game tools to analyze and adjust your swing, it's a surprisingly realistic experience and helps you understand the real things you should be looking for in your mechanics when you do get in front of a real pitched ball. It's also a blast to be able to go to your own virtual "batting cage" any time of the day or night, no matter what the weather.
I'm guessing that the poor response and reviews of this game may have resulted in less-than-stellar sales for Konami. That's too bad, because I hope they keeps trying--the concept and execution were great, but they were probably hampered by the limitations of the Wii. Perhaps this idea was just a little before its time. It may be a better fit for a console like the Playstation Move, with its improved motion sensor capabilities, 3D capabilities, and high resolution graphics. Or, the technology in this game would be amazing if it were incorporated into the "advanced" level of a game like Sony's MLB: The Show or 2KSports' Major League Baseball.
Casual gamers will probably want to pass on this game. But those who are baseball fanatics and want to experience the process (and frustrations) of training to hit Major League-type pitches, this is by far the best simulation out there.
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Swing for the fences (without the fences) in this game that lets you take batting practice right in your living room! The Cages: Pro Style Batting Practice is a virtual pitching machine with a Cy Young-caliber array of pitches. Step into the box and take some cuts against 19 different pitch types, including fastballs, sliders, cutters, 12-6 curveballs, off-speed junk, the high cheese, and more.
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