Last year's MVP Baseball 2003 was like your ex-girlfriend. She caught your eye, you had no regrets with the time you spent with her, but in the end she had too many flaws that forced you to eventually part ways. Now MVP Baseball 2004 is out and is playing the role of the rebound relationship. She plays off your old girlfriend’s flaws, but you know that in the long run she is not the one you’re looking for.
The Same Pretty Girl Without All The "Hangups"
MVP Baseball 2004 kept all the good parts from last year and heavily overhauled the bad. The batter-pitcher interface was very good in MVP Baseball 2003, but it was also very shallow in that there was no concept of bullpens, wild pitches, or visible stamina. MVP Baseball 2004 adds all these scenarios into the mix. If your pitcher is having a tough time getting through an inning, you can visit the mound to calm him down. If he displays a positive reaction, then you can gain an extra chunk of stamina back to get him through the inning. However, if you take him out too early, he might have a negative reaction and lose even more stamina. You can also warm up your pitchers before you insert them into the game. If you have them warm up too long, they'll begin to lose a little bit of stamina at a time. Another feature that adds to the realism is that pitches are no longer placed exactly where you specify them. Aiming pitches on the strike zone border is no longer a guarantee that they'll be strikes. Pitch accuracy can now vary in that closely aimed pitches can miss their target and become balls, or strikes that are closer to being over the heart of the plate. The final new feature for pitchers is the pitch memory. This allows you to see what kinds of pitches the batter faced the last time he was up to bat. While this feature isn't too useful when playing against the computer, when used against another human player, it can serve to remind you how much he relies on that breaking ball out of the zone.
While most veterans of the series will be familiar with the batter interface, they will most likely have to change their batting strategy. MVP Baseball 2003 was notorious for allowing even mediocre power hitters to pull outside pitches over the wall. Not this year. If you try and pull outside pitches, they will either be fouled off or result in weak pop-ups. You have to make use of the left analog stick to adjust your swing to certain pitch locations. You are penalized even more for mistakenly pulling outside pitches and slapping at inside pitches, as is the case in the game of baseball. It adds more strategy to the game than simply swinging at the right time.
There is one significant defect with the hitting mechanism. Left handed batters hit significantly fewer homeruns than right handed batters in the game. This is because left handed batters seem to put more topspin on the ball when they hit it. This is especially true to balls hit to the opposite field. While spectacular hitters like Todd Helton and Jim Thome can overcome this to an extent, they will still hit fewer homeruns than a right handed batter that has the exact same ability ratings. Luckily this doesn’t carry through to the simulations. However this is a significant bug that can ruin the experience and change management decisions in the franchise mode.
MVP Baseball 2004 also overhauled the franchise mode. Last year's franchise mode offered great new innovations like managerial goals and the ability to intervene into a simulated game. However, the franchise mode was so unbalanced that the game became almost unplayable after about 10 seasons. MVP Baseball 2004 kept all those features, but improved the weaknesses.
The franchise mode introduces a minor league system. However, unlike other baseball games which only have an AAA affiliate, MVP Baseball 2004 introduces a AA affiliate as well, both of which are user playable. This not only allows for a more accurate baseball managing experience, but it also allows for a better management environment on the major league level as well. By having true prospects, you can now trade them away for veteran players needed for a pennant push.
Franchise mode also introduces player happiness and team chemistry to the mix. The idea is that if you’re player feels as if he’s underpaid or is not getting enough playing time, he’ll become unhappy. This affects the overall team chemistry. Team chemistry is made up of player happiness factors as well as other factors like whether the team is winning. The overall team chemistry determines how well the players perform in simulated games. While this is a good premise, it does have its flaws. The player happiness seems to be governed by some faulty principles. For instance, there are some players who complain about their contract when they are not only overpaid, but under-performing statistically and are not talented ratings-wise. Secondly, a player complains about playing time if they are not on track to appear in two thirds of the team’s innings. First of all this is not accurate as many non-starters rarely get that much playing time. Secondly, I have seen players complain about playing time after returning from a one-month injury. Overall it’s a good idea, which just wasn’t properly play-tested.
Player development was a serious issue last year, and still is in MVP Baseball 2004. While many players have more balanced statistics and not weighed down by huge power numbers, the players will never develop the superstar attributes of an Albert Pujols or an Alex Rodriguez. This is due to a lack of potential in young players. They start out with low ability ratings, but their stats never reach the astronomical numbers like those of the existing superstars. Despite this problem, the player development is still better than last year.
MVP Baseball 2004 also offers a fantasy draft. This was one of the most glaring omissions from last year's title. When drafting, you choose players for just your major league team, your major and AAA teams, or for all 3 teams. My biggest complaint with the fantasy draft is that none of the contract information is available to you when you want to draft a player. So, if you've just drafted Alex Rodriguez, you might want to alter your draft strategy to draft cheaper talent to fit into your budget.
MVP Baseball 2004 also returns old innovations like managerial goals and simulated game intervention. The managerial goals in MVP Baseball 2004 are adjusted to be much more reasonable and account for the minor leagues as well. This year you have only a handful of managerial goals, only a few of which apply to your major league club. The others would apply to your two minor league affiliates. These goals consist of leading the league in a certain statistical category, sweeping a rival a certain number of times, making the playoffs, etc ... The goals are also split up into one year goals to be accomplished by the year's end and others that would roll from year to year over a 3 to 5 year period. Overall it cleans up what were very unrealistic expectations for a manager in last year's game.
Some Things That You’ve Never Experienced
One of the biggest features added to MVP Baseball 2004 is the ability to play the game online. I didn't see the big need to take this game online since MVP Baseball 2003 had many larger issues to fix and clean up. I have to admit though that the online feature was a pleasant surprise. Despite some sizable flaws, it does add a lot to the game.
Bringing the game online does many things to enhance it. When playing against someone else, you can either challenge someone in one of the various lobbies, or you can select the "Play Now" option and play against a random opponent. Besides the ability to play other people from around the world, you can also download roster updates. The bad part is that these updates are mandatory when playing online and one update can fill up almost an eighth of your memory card.
The biggest drawback to the online play is that you cannot select your options. When entering a game, you are playing on the pro difficulty level with the default lineups and your ace on the mound. In the game you can toggle the hot and cold zones, the strike zone, and the type of pitching cursor. However, the first person to hit pause can adjust these settings and only that player can change them from then on. This can lead to conflicts with less reasonable people in cyberspace. While this can lead to abuse, there are other mechanisms in place to prevent other types of abuse. If one person delays the game enough, they will be kicked off and charged with a disconnect and/or loss. One annoying aspect is that if the person decides to unplug their network connection anytime before the game is over, they'll be charged with a disconnect, but not a loss. Also, I have not gotten credit for wins when my opponent has disconnected. I have been up by 10 and one pitch away from winning the game when my opponent disconnected, yet I was never credited with a win.
Overall, the online mode is very fun to play despite its drawbacks. I would like to see the ability to adjust the settings in next year's version. It would be nice to see EA get creative with some sort of online league to force players to use their rotations wisely instead of milking their ace or knuckleballers each game. However, that's another article for another time. Since EA cleaned up the biggest flaws from last year, the online mode is simply icing on the cake.
In addition to bringing the game online, there's a new manager mode. This allows you to control the game from the bench as the game simulates the match. For each pitch you get to tell the batter or pitcher how aggressive to be. In addition, you can also realign your fielders, call for a bunt, steal, hit and run, or even hit the batter intentionally. While this is yet another goodie in the grab bag of MVP Baseball 2004, it isn't as comprehensive as other text based baseball simulators I've seen. I do not imagine this being a popular feature as it takes almost as much time to manage a game than it does to play it. Therefore it won't be a popular alternative to simulating games in your season.
The final new treat that EA offers in MVP Baseball 2004 is the ability to earn points and unlock historic players, uniforms, and stadiums. This system is very similar to the one used in the more recent Madden games. You earn points by accomplishing certain feats on the diamond, whether it is having a player bat .500 for a game, pitching a complete game, or stealing 3rd base. You can also gain points for accomplishing feats in a season in your dynasty mode as well. A typical game might net you between 250 and 500 points, enough to buy a uniform, whereas ending a season in dynasty mode might net you 2500-5000 points, which is enough to unlock a ballpark or historic player.
Sure She Looks Pretty, But Can She Sing?
The strength of the MVP Baseball series is the look of the game. MVP Baseball 2004 is no different. The player models look great and accurate. They move fluently and accurate to their big league counterparts. For instance if you can fool Ichiro into swinging at a bad pitch, he'll swing awkwardly and be halfway off to first base. The stadiums look crisp and clean and more accurate with the addition of an interactive crowd made up of rough polygons. You can see people get up and applaud whenever there's a base hit or strikeout by the home team.
Despite these additions, the graphics do seem to take a half step backwards. In exchange for these newer animations, the framerate has taken a visible hit. Animations are choppier than last year, thankfully not enough that it interferes with the gameplay. In addition to the framerate issues, the environment has the same look. The night sky still looks eerily dark and the stadiums seem cold and empty. The graphics fail to really create an authentic atmosphere of being at a real big league game.
The sound is very similar to the graphics in that it adds some new features, but in the end it takes a step backwards. Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow are back to do the commentary and they are just as annoying as ever. While they are certainly more accurate with their calls and analysis, their tedious shtick remains the same and they don't add anything to the sorry state of sports video game commentary.
The stadium atmosphere is pretty good with the exception of the crowd. The amount of people who respond to strikeouts and base hits make it seem like there are only a couple dozen people in the entire stadium. While this would be more authentic for a minor league game, it just doesn't seem too authentic when you get to the major league level. While there are more taunts that emanate from the crowd, it just isn't enough to make up for the shallow audio in this game.
She Knows When To Be Naughty and When To Be Nice.
If you missed out on MVP Baseball 2003, that's ok because unlike current EA Sports titles, MVP Baseball 2004 doesn't force you to master the fundamental controls and techniques before you can tackle the easiest setting. Also, if you only know the basics of baseball, you aren't going to get clobbered by the computer players.
The batter pitcher interface remains almost completely intact from last year. There's still the golf swing style pitching meter. Each pitch is assigned to a specific button, which also starts the pitching meter in motion. Swinging the bat will automatically adjust for balls all over the strike zone. You just have to account for the timing. The left analog stick controls whether to aim for a fly ball, a ground ball, whether to pull the ball, or to slap it to the opposite field. This is dubbed by EA as the Pure Swing system. Overall it's the same as last year where your batting results are more tied to your Pure Swing decisions.
The fielding remains mostly the same as well. Throwing to a particular base is assigned to one of the four buttons on the Playstation controller. The throwing meter remains intact from last year and lets you control the speed and accuracy of your throws. One new option is that you now have the ability to jump or dive for the ball when controlling the fielders manually. By pointing the right analog stick in the direction you want to dive, you will make an attempt at jumping or diving at the ball.
People who are familiar with MVP Baseball 2003 will also feel comfortable running the bases. The dpad is again used to move runners from base to base and certain buttons are assigned to advance or hold everyone running the bases. The speed around the basepaths is vastly improved so that a player like Juan Pierre can leg out a ground ball if the infield isn't drawn in enough. Stealing also depends more on the ability of the catcher and the type of pitch thrown. MVP Baseball 2003 relied too heavily on the runner's speed in determining a successful steal attempt. The right analog stick now controls sliding. Pointing the right analog stick in a particular direction will determine whether to slide head first, feet first, to the right of the bag, or to the left of it.
The game is slightly more challenging than last year. Most of the extra competition is accounted for by some of the new features like pitching placement and the Pure Swing adjustments. The computer will still provide a challenge for the many high quality players as it will mix up the types and locations of its pitches while taking advantage of any mistakes by your pitcher. Despite that, the computer will also fall victim to the same pitching tricks as last year. Despite the inclusion of the pitch history, the computer player will not take advantage of it. You can usually apply the same pitching patterns to each and every batter and achieve the same success. While there are many different settings and sliders to adjust, the pitching is the easiest to master and can really limit the challenge.
One issue with the challenge is that the easier the difficulty level, the more likely the computer pitcher is going to throw strikes. While this is a logical design decision made by the developers, as it allows a you to get your timing down without having to worry about pitch location as much. However, this does lead to fewer walks as well. While I’m willing to accept less realism in lower difficulty levels in order to help people learn the game, it should be noted that people will begin to see more realism once you’ve virtually mastered the game. Being able to play competitively on the top difficulty level is a feat that only a small percentage of people will be able to accomplish.
Do I Take Her Home To Meet The Parents?
MVP Baseball 2004 gives you many reasons to come back day after day and play it. The fixing of many of last year's bugs allows you to play the game in many different ways rather than just relying on the power of the homerun. The franchise mode is so deep that playing 162 games just scratches the surface as management moves can fill up hours of your time. The online mode will keep many people interested as human players adapt better to habitual tactics. Finally, the quest to unlock many of the different players, stadiums and uniforms will increase the incentive to play the game over and over again.
The bugs in this game really limit the overall value of this game. The left handed hitter bug and the player progression bug affect both the game dynamics and the franchise mode’s lasting value respectively. It’s a shame that these two bugs affect two very important aspects to the game in such an important way because MVP Baseball 2004 is so much better than last year.
I haven’t played any of the other baseball games yet this year, so I cannot comment on how MVP Baseball 2004 compares to them. However, I can say that there are significant drawbacks to MVP Baseball 2004 that open the door for another baseball franchise to steal game sales by people looking for an authentic baseball experience. Based on what I saw last year from Sega, Sony, and Acclaim, I’m not sure if they’re ready to claim the crown. MVP Baseball 2004 is a very good baseball game, despite its problems and I can certainly justify its purchase. Just like last year, I’m still waiting for that killer baseball title and I think EA is very close to it. However, being a longtime Phillies fan, I grow weary of having to wait until next year.
