Game Reviews

Baseball Superstars 2011

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Baseball Superstars 2011

Baseball isn’t the most exciting of sports to a lot of people. Sorry, Yankees fans, but it just isn’t. It’s like a mutant cricket, which itself isn’t exactly an adrenaline-pumping game to begin with.

It feels like Gamevil have sought to produce a baseball game that can circumvent this problem, appealing to both sceptics and fans of the sport. In some respects it's scored a home run. In others, it's struck out.

All third base are belong to us

As usual for the series, the presentation is straight out of left-field. There’s no realistic muscle movements, licensed players, or life-like shadows and lighting here. Instead, your team is made up of anime characters and cartoon animations.

Far from being a pain, this is genuinely refreshing and reminiscent of the more colourful and light-hearted sports games like Everybody’s Golf 2.

Even the oddball characters - like the Tank who fires the ball instead of pitching it, or the top hat-wearing magician who can throw the ball along an erratic path - feel like a welcome respite from the dull simulation so often found in the sports genre.

Home fun

The game has several modes of play. Exhibition is a friendly match between the fictional teams, all based around animals or legendary creatures – the Eagles versus the Unicorns, for example. Mission mode let’s you take on specific challenges, while Season lets you manage a team through a whopping 45 matches.

The best mode, however, is My League, which puts you in control of a single batter or pitcher. Before each match you have to train to increase your personal stats, while also ensuring your morale meter doesn’t go down too much.

You boost morale by resting, eating, or dining out in the hometown. The town outings also offer you a chance to talk to fans to increase your popularity or go to hospital if you're injured.

There’s something of an RPG story as you meet other characters, but this can feel awkwardly like a dating simulator as you stumble into anime girl after anime girl. It’s certainly a Japanese game.

Then again, if you feel a little bit socially deprived after that you can always try out the networked multiplayer and challenge another actual human being to a match.

Quit pitchin’

There's something compelling about bringing your My League character up from nothing and becoming steadily better. However, the game is addled by a lack of complex controls for Xperia Play, and after a while the cycle of pitching and batting becomes a little too samey.

Apart from tapping the D-pad to move yourself a millimetre in either direction, batting is a simple matter of pressing X at the right time. If you hit the ball, the direction and distance it goes seems to be a matter of luck. It’s hard to tell how to hit it perfectly in any particular direction. A lot of the starting problems could be solved with a simple tutorial, the Help document from the main menu being unclear and not very helpful at all.

Pitching also only involves moving a cursor slightly and pressing X. Whether your opponent strikes out, hits, or fouls is a complete lottery. It rarely feels like you're personally responsible for a good pitch.

In the end, the managerial and stat-building elements of Baseball Superstars 2011 are the most enjoyable parts, with the sprites and automated plays even being slightly reminiscent of Kairosoft’s management games. The actual baseball mechanics feel slightly repetitive and underwhelming, but that doesn’t stop it from ultimately being a steady and amiable ‘ball sim.

Baseball Superstars 2011

The batting and pitching feels like a mini-game at times rather than something more fleshed out, but the affable presentation, off-beat attitude, and solid managerial modes mostly make up for this
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Brendan Caldwell
Brendan Caldwell
Brendan is a boy. Specifically, a boy who plays games. More specifically, a nice boy who plays many games. He often feels he should be doing something else. That's when the siren call of an indie gem haunts him. Who shall win this battle of wills? Answer: not Brendan.