Inside Pitch 2003

"Not the best this season, but worth a look"

Gameplay 7 (8 if you own Live)

Inside Pitch isn't the best playing baseball game around, but it can be very fun after you get a few games under your belt and get a feel to how IP plays. It's not a true sim of baseball, but it isn't as arcadey as MLB Slugfest. Scores are true to life, you can strike out of a reasonable number of hitters if you're good, and HR's don't come every other AB. Fielding is fun to play since you can bring HR's back in the park and make some amazing diving catches to piss off your opponent.

You can create a player, and then with the points you've earned from winning games or training your player in the cool training mode, you can upgrade their stats. You don't actually increase your players stats one number at a time, rather, you use your points to buy a random increase. Numbers will go from 1-50 and back again, and whatever number you land on when you press X is how many points will be added to whichever stat you chose to increase.

The best part of IP is the Live play. Creating a game is simple - choose number of innings, stadium, if you want to warm up pitchers or not, ranked or unranked, public or private - among other options. Or use Optimatch to find someone to play with. The online play is smooth, and for the most part, lag free. Occasionally you'll get a bit of lag as a pitch is thrown, but not often. It's fun rubbing it in your opponent as you belt a 3 run HR out of the park.

Graphics 8

This year quite a few baseball games have been released for Xbox, and a fair number of them look good. World Series Baseball, MVP Baseball, and MLB Slugfest earning those honors. Inside Pitch falls just about in the middle. The stadiums are the best of any game this year, with tons of detail in the backgrounds and decent looking crowds. Player faces are among the best of any baseball game, while the bodies are just about average or better.

Batting animations are better than I expected. Players reach for pitches outside, go down in the dirt for ones below the knees, and swing high for balls out of the zone. It all looks very fluid. Animations for sliding into bases, and sliding catches are good, but the culprit here are the diving catches. They look absolutely horrible and completely unrealistic. Players look like they are sliding on their stomach on one of those wet 'n slippery plastic mats that you played on in your yard as a child. As soon as you dive, they are laying on the ground, flat as a stick. They dive extremely far also. Besides the diving animation, all others are fluid and look nice.

Sound 9

Inside Pitch does a really good job in the sound department. The crack of the bat, sliding into base, the roar or the crowd - all very good. On top of that, we get commentary from Joe Buck and Tim McCarver! Excellent! They do an awesome job, as well. They go into a lot of detail in certain situations and say a lot about a player. When a player is leading the MLB is hits, doubles, whatever, they'll let you know! So cool. Even better, you can use whatever ripped songs you have on your harddrive to create a playlist (up to 50 songs). These songs will play randomly on the menus, and during games when players are coming up to bat. One of the coolest features next to Live play.

Final Score 8

Pros

+Only baseball game with Live play
+Training tracks for created players
+Custom music support
+Great announcing

Cons

-Animations could be better
-Not the deepest baseball game
-No Franchise mode

Inside Pitch isn't the best baseball game on the market, but it will give you a good baseball game to play for a few months with the great Live play and decent season mode.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/03, Updated 05/25/03