All-Star Baseball 2003

"Nice try Acclaim, but the glitches are still there....."

I picked up this game thinking the glitches were removed from 2002, also the game added some great features like a franchise mode. They also jumped on the ''madden card'' bandwagon and added the card feature which is a good and bad thing, ill go into details later. Here's the review

Controls: 9/10
I liked the controls, same as all the other All Star Baseball games, IMO. I don't think I have to go into a lot of detail here.

Graphics: 8/10
All the stadium and player's faces are very nice and realistic. I noticed some slowdown, but not enough to screw up the gameplay.

Sound: 6/10
The crowd is excellent, they know when to cheer. (If you throw two strikes in the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs , the crowd gets loud.) But what brought this score down was the announcers. They were good and bad.

Good +
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Know the team's name. (even created teams)
Know what all the players did previously in the game.
Know player's stats from 2001
Had a lot of things to say
Bad -
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Wrong Stats for player (I got Rolen's stats when Glanville was up)

Gameplay:5/10
Now for the fun part......

Good +
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Always spectacular plays on the defensive side
(Diving catches almost all the time)
Bad -
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The computer misses the easiest defensive plays (always dropping the ball on easy Pop-Fly's)
Way too easy to hit home runs (even on the highest difficulty)
Easy to get 20+ runs per game
If the pitch was hit too hard , the fielder always throws it to home.

The Glitches are still there from 2002 but don't happen as often, Ill tell you the glitches if you haven't played 2002

The Game Locking up (only happen 3 times for me so far)

The computer catching balls they weren't even near (The Left Fielder catching a ball that was hit into right field)

The shortstop sometimes just stand there with the ball till you make all your runners cross home plate.

Modes:
Quick Play: Picks 2 random teams if just want to play a quick game (10/10)

Exhibition: Just like Quick Play, but you get to pick the teams (10/10)

Season: Just play one season, good if you don't feel like going through Franchise mode (10/10)

Series: Pick two teams and play in the world series!(10/10)

Franchise: Just like Season but you play 20 seasons and it's more in-depth, like people can be inducted into the hall of fame (cool idea), but I wish in 2004 that you could draft rookies to put on your farm team , and the Computer controlled teams trade way too much. (7/10)

Player Cards: Just like in the madden series, if you earn enough points in a game (10) you can get a pack of cards, these packs of cards consist of

Player Cards (Do Nothing)
Stadium Cards (unlocks stadiums)
Team Cards (unlocks teams)
Cheat Cards (unlock cheats)
Uniform Cards (unlock a alternative uniform for a team)

This is a great idea , but you get TOO many doubles, its get really annoying cool idea though (8/10)

Create-A-Player-This is pretty much like 2002's which was good. (6/10)

Create-A-Team:This is a cool idea, you pick the city you want your team in (Too Bad you cant put your own in), then choose the logos (the uniforms come with the logos), then you do a draft , then you play a season with your create-a-team, too bad you cant do a franchise :(. (7/10)

Rent or Buy: Buy if it is under $50,Rent to try it out to see if you like it , it's a average baseball game.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/09/02, Updated 09/09/02