High Heat Major League Baseball 2002

"Not a home run, but not a strike-out either"

The High Heat series comes to the Playstation 2 with a mixed bag of goods ..... almost feeling at times like the game was rushed to the market in order to fill the much noticed void of games for Sony's new system.

SOUNDS 5.0

The sounds in High Heat are truly underwhelming. They boast in their ads that the crowd noises display a realism not before witnessed in a baseball game. However, I found the crowd noises to be subdued and flat, with generic crowd noises thrown into the game. Why a game as far removed as MLB '99 was able to do a better job with it's crowd noises than a next-generation game is beyond my understanding... not even a beer vendor or heckler to be heard here. In addition, the in-game sounds lack realism. Sometimes the batter would make a graphical glitch like he was going to scrape the ground with his bat .... but the graphics would switch to all-of-a-sudden the pitcher throwing, the batter ready to hit, but the SOUND of the batter scraping the ground with his bat would be what was heard .... truly laughable and another example of something that gives the game an unrefined, rushed feel to it.
The announcers are fine enough, however, and do actually provide commentary on actual scenarios within the game. But again, there is a stuttering involved sometimes that gives that herky-jerky feel.

GRAPHICS 4.0

Again, a mixed bag to be had. The stadiums feel like a mat painting, with bland backdrops, empty dug-outs, and cardboard cut-outs where the fans should be. Add to that the truly disturbing graphics of the batters when they come to the plate ( they all spaz towards the plate like a zombie from Resident Evil for cripes sake ) ... of the runners on base with their bodies mingled with the defensive player on the base ( ''excuse me, but I think you've accidentally thrust your leg through my chest '') ..... and the before-mentioned graphical glitches where one moment the batter is waving for time from the umpire, then BAM, the pitcher's pitching and he snaps into place .... and you come up feeling like there was a rush to the marketplace on this one. Nothing comes off feeling like they took the time to iron out the bugs in the game.

CONTROL & GAMEPLAY 8.0

Here is High Heat's Savior and the reason I enjoyed the game, despite the many flaws. The control is dead-on and the game plays very well. I loved the batter-pitcher interface. The fact that different pitchers threw differently .... Randy Johnson's high fastball was not the same one that Hideo Nomo was throwing, etc. Also, the ball moved realistically once hit, even curving in the air and requiring some nifty plays in the outfield as a ball was tailing away from the fielder. All nice touches, and obviously where they spent the time to get the game mechanics right. Sure, there was still that time you threw out the guy at first from right field, but heyy, maybe the runner stubbed a toe going down the line. All, in all, the best feature of High Heat.

OVERALL 7.0

The only thing that saves this game is the gameplay. The stats are not quite right, (for some reason it doesn't calculate saves for relievers properly), but overall does a fine job there. The game feels rushed and 'glitchy', and suffers from bland backdrops and choppy animations ( One note: turn off the player coming to the plate animations -- I think the developers only put that option in there to save them the trouble of removing that feature from the game .... it is truly that bad ). But gameplay saves the day, and there High Heat excels. But I would DEFINITELY rent this one first, and perhaps think about saving the $50 for when the NEXT installment hits the shelves, hopefully refined and with the glitches removed.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/10/01, Updated 05/10/01