Hardball!

"The whole's greater than the sum of its parts"

I am sure most people have heard of the saying ''The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,'' this certainly applies to Hardball! for Genesis. This game is not exceptional in any one aspect, but as a baseball game it delivers a lot of fun.

STORY (3): This being a baseball game, there is no storyline. You can choose between practice mode (batting cage) exhibition mode (one game) or ''World Series'' mode (a best of 7 series). The lack of different play modes is what hurts this game, but I personally don't mind it. You can choose from 26 different teams, corresponding to the 26 active MLB teams as of 1991. The teams are represented by only the cities, and there are no actual MLB team names or MLB players featured in this game. Each team has different strengths and weaknesses while some teams are simply better than others. You can choose one player to play vs. the computer or two to challenge a friend.

AUDIO/VISUAL (5): The special effects in this game are...minimal. Other than the basic sounds of the game, like the ball hitting the bat, umpires' calls, there aren't anything worth mentioning. As far as visually, it is just as plain. There is only one bland looking stadium regardless of which teams you pick. The crowd looks just like a batch of different color pixels. The batters look identical, pitchers do have a few variations in appearance. The in-game animation is not bad at all. The movements of the players are fluid, and the flight of the ball is natural. If you're looking for special camera angles, great sound effects, or any other fancy features, you won't find it in Hardball! and I would suggest you go for another game.

GAMEPLAY (8): The best part of this game is that the action is quick, there are no special effects to distract from the in-game action, you can usually finish a 9 inning game in 20 minutes. You get two different views. One is a closeup of the mound and plate from behind the pitcher, used during an AB. The other is an overhead view of the field was behind the plate, used when the ball is in play. The AI is decent, but you can take advantage of it in certain situations. Another strong part of this game is the toned down offense. You won't see many Coors field scores in this game, most are low scoring affairs that depend on your execution of ''small ball.'' I don't believe I've ever hit more than 3 HRs in a game. The most fun you'll have is when you challenge a friend in which case the scoring will tend to be even lower. Many games will be 2-1 or 1-0 nail-biters and depend a lot on strategy and game-smarts. One bad strategic move at a crucial moment can and will cost you the game.

CONTROLS (7): The controls are simple and responsive. It has its problem but not bad overall. I will separately review the controls for hitting, base running, pitching, and fielding.

HITTING - You hit A to swing and C to bunt. You can adjust the level and location of your swing by pressing the D-pad in the appropriate direction when you swing. Sounds simple enough, but it's quite hard to master to hit the ball hard consistently because most pitchers feature multiple pitches with different movements and the ball arrives at the plate quickly. I find that it's better to just swing down the middle and make contact than to mess around with the swing. No major problems with this part of the game other than the fact that you won't be able to even make contact with anything out of the strike zone so a good eye at the plate is very important.

BASE RUNNING - I have the most problems with the base running controls. The base runners are represented on the bases by 3 different colors, depending on how fast they are. However, even the fastest runner will have trouble straight stealing. The slow ones are so slow that it's nearly impossible to score from second on a single even when it's a hit and run play. The biggest problem is that the lead runner(s) cannot advance the extra base until a batted ball has landed safely in the field even though it's obvious that the ball will be a hit. For example, if you have a runner on first, and a ball is hit clearly over the outfielder's head, once that runner reaches second base he cannot advance to third until the ball has landed. And if the outfielder gets to the ball quick enough, you might have to settle for runners on first and second when it should have been at least second and third. As a result, it sometimes takes 4 hits to score a run. You can counter this problem a bit by using hit-and-run on every pitch (you can get back if you swing and miss because the AI is dumb in this aspect) but the problem is still there and it's still very annoying.

PITCHING - Pitchers can have as many as 5 different pitches to choose from and out thinking your opponent on pitch selection is a fun cat-and-mouse game. If you make good pitches you'll get outs. Mistakes will get hit hard. The biggest problem I have with the pitching is that you lose stamina very quickly and generally a starting pitching will have nothing left by pitch 60. Another problem is that there is no variation in velocity of pitches among pitchers. For example, all ''super fastballs'' will travel at 95 MPH regardless of pitcher, and you won't have an option to ''take a little off the pitch.''

FIELDING - You can only control one fielder at a time and the computer decides for you. When a ball is hit, the announcer will declare a position and that's the player you need to move to field the ball. You can run into problems when you anticipate that a particular fielder will field it and the computer picks a different one, this only happens when the ball is hit in an ambiguous place like in the infield hole. You do have an option to set the game to allow errors or not. I usually choose no errors because the only time errors occur in the game is when an outfielder randomly drops a ball, which is one of the rarest type of errors in actual baseball.

OVERALL (7): This game certainly isn't flawless but it's charming in its own way that I still very much recommend it. I've tried a number of baseball games on SNES and Genesis, and this is my favorite. If you're looking for a no-nonsense game of good old hardball, then this is for you. If you're looking for something that has a lot of fancy add-ons, then it's not.

RENT or BUY: I recommend renting first to try it out.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/03, Updated 01/03/03