Inside Pitch 2003

"Swings for the fences..... but pops out to short"

For those who don't know, MLB Inside Pitch is Microsoft's entry into the baseball market. It is decent for a first year title, but it will definatly need MUCH improvement for next year.

Graphics-8/10
As you may have heard, the stadiums in this game are BEAUTIFUL. If only the player models had followed. Barry Bonds isn't even recognizable, and pretty much everyone has the same face. The bodies of the players fall into three catagories. Skinny, kinda fat, and obese. That's it. The field looks awesome, though. They tell you what the turf is made of in certain stadiums, and the texturing is WONDERFUL on the grass and dirt.

GAMEPLAY- 9/10
The ONLY saving grace for this game is that it supports xbox live. Without it, it'd be a 6/10 easily. XBL is AWESOME to play baseball on. I've wanted a game like this since I got XBL. The problem is the batter/pitcher interface. There is a pitching grid, consisting of 9 zones in the strike zone. You select a pitch (EVERY pitcher has either 4 or 2 pitches) then you select where you want the pitch to go, by placing a red cursor in one of the nine zones. It WILL go to that zone, which makes placing your pitch impossible. You can also select from eight zones outside the strike zone, to try and get batters to swing at balls. They almost never do, however. One of the great features of ISP 2003, though is the create-a-player mode. This mode is like any other, until you get to your player's stats. For a non-pitcher, you start out with two stats unlocked-arm strength and Baserunning Speed. You also start with a certain amount of points. However, instead of just putting the points onto the stat, you press x, and a counter starts going REALLY fast counting from 1 to 50. You then press x again, and the counter stops, adding however many points onto the stat that you landed on. For example you press x on baserunning speed. You press x again. The counter is on 43- your baserunning speed goes up 43 points. Then, as you gain points, it then costs more attribute points for each spin. It starts out at 5, and the more times you spin on a particular stat, it can go up to 45 or 50. Now, to unlock the rest of the stats, you train your player in REALLY cool mini games. One of them is timing vs. left handed or right handed pitchers, where you face ten pitches and must hit each one at the exact right time. If you hit 6/10, you pass, but if you hit 10/10, your timing attribute will go up. The better you do, the more points you get. I easily spent the entire first day training my player and making him better. When you run out of points for spins, you then must go to championship challenges, another cool feature. This mode takes about 10 of the most impressive things from last year's season, and you must re-create them. For example, remeber when Mike Cameron hit 4 homers in one game? Now YOU must do it, but if you hit 5, you get a bonus and more points for your created player. See how this can be REALLY cool? These two things and XBL save this game's butt. ONE other gripe I have is about MS's sports games. WHY the HELL do they insist on having their balls travel like they're on the moon?? It takes about 5 seconds to throw the ball from shallow center to home. That's not NEARLY the time it really takes someone like Andruw Jones. Fever suffered from the same thing. MS needs to fix this. FAST.

Batting is another problem. You have the same grid as pitching, and you move the analog stick/d-pad in the zone the pitch is thrown to. However, you really don't need to move the cursor at all, because if your timing is right, you'll hit ANYthing in the strike zone out of the park. Or at least into the outfield. Not too impressive.

Sound-9/10
This is where the game shines. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver (the guys from the world series) are the announcers, and they do the best job of any announcers I've heard in any sports game. Plus, you can rip up to 50 songs from your xbox hard drive, and they play in the menus and during batter walkups and between innings. Very impressive.

Replay Value-6/10
NO FRANCHISE MODE????????
NO @#$%^&* FRANCHISE MODE?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!?!
HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN??????????
I really don't understand how ANY game designer could put out a sports game without a franchise mode. You play through ONE season, and the only thing you get from it is extra points for a created player. WTF? Someone must have hit Ed Friese on the head for allowing this game to be made without a franchise mode.

BUY or RENT?-RENT
You must ask yourself one question ''Am I willing to plunk down 50.00 for a game that will not be fun in 3 months?'' I doubt you will. A rental will really give you all the fun of this game, even with XBL. It's just not that entertaining for a long time. Despite it's good points, WSB or MVP definatly beat this game out. This is the worst baseball game this year, behind slugfest. Thank you for reading my review, and feel free to tell me what you think

Final Verdict-6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/03, Updated 06/23/03