- Xbox Live support and good online
gameplay
- Amazing animated stadium and surrounding environment visuals
- Good play-by-play and color commentary usage
- Championship Challenge is a lot of fun, but could have used a
few more additions
- Uneven A.I. and lack of baseball
“smarts”
- Awful after-play cut-scenes
- What? No franchise mode?
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Inside
Pitch 2003
Score: 7.0 / 10
Microsoft has been hard at work trying to
create a first-party sports gaming dynasty for its Xbox. Its first two
franchise efforts, NFL Fever and NBA Inside Drive, have improved in
quality from their first to second year but haven’t been any better than
average especially against the strong, and much more polished,
competition from Electronic Arts Sports and Sega Sports titles. Trying
to buck the trend of a sub par debut is Microsoft’s first baseball
effort, Inside Pitch 2003. Unfortunately, even with strong online
capabilities, Inside Pitch 2003 can’t overcome the lack of a franchise
mode, sometimes uneven artificial intelligence and baseball smarts, and
gameplay that’s a little too close to the arcade side of the fence for
true baseball video game aficionados to avoid an underachieving rookie
campaign.
Inside Pitch 2003 has a few redeeming qualities in its repertoire. The
strongest is its Xbox Live support, which by default makes it the best
online Xbox baseball title,
strictly on the merits of being the only
online Xbox baseball title. Still, although it’s in an online league of
its own, Inside Pitch 2003 performs above expectations on Xbox Live.
Although the gameplay tends to lean away from a true simulation and
features arcade-style results, a lot of good baseball is packed into
Inside Pitch 2003 online, where some of the game’s flaws are more
forgivable.
The lone bright star of single-player gaming is
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Inside Pitch 2003’s Championship Challenge, which follows the biggest
trend in sports gaming by letting you re-live some of 2002’s most
memorable performances and trying to duplicate feats such as hitting
Barry Bonds’ 600th career home run, breaking the infamous tie at last
year’s All-Star game, or the most difficult of all, duplicating Craig
Biggio’s cycle (hitting triples isn’t easy, even in a video game). This
mode is a great extra feature for real baseball fans, but unfortunately,
there are only a handful of actual challenges and you’ll definitely be
wanting for more.
In most other areas, Inside Pitch 2003 drops the ball to some degree.
While overall it’s by no means an awful or unplayable game, it suffers
from too many uneven facets. Case in point is the visual delivery.
Inside Pitch 2003 sports magnificent graphics when it comes to the many
ballparks you’ll visit. These are some of the most beautiful renderings
of baseball stadiums seen, and on top of that are the animated
scoreboards and surrounding stadium features that are the envy of many a
sports game. The ultra-realistic scoreboards actually are completely
animated with goodies such as score updates and the usual presentations
you would see if you were at the game in person. Flags wave in the
breeze, after-homer or after-game fireworks are dazzling and lighting
during night action is super-realistic.
But as impressive as the stadiums and surrounding visuals are, the
player and on-field graphical presentation is a huge disappointment.
Once a ball is hit into play, the Inside Pitch 20003 players don’t look
or move close to lifelike at all. The only area that they aren’t too bad
is in the pitcher/batter interface, where both the hitter and hurler at
least retain some semblance of realistic appearance. One other complaint
is with the after-out animations, where every player waves and showboats
to the crowd, even if he just caught a routine fly ball. Real baseball
players may be the most obnoxious of all professional sports performers
(at least in their off-field activities), but even they know that they
don’t show up other teams or players on the field without expecting
major payback.
At first, Inside Pitch 2003’s defensive controls seem to be some of the
best mapped out and well designed of any I’ve seen in a while in a
sports game. Using the right thumbstick instead of the buttons to throw
to each base was a good idea. It’s easier to hit the thumbstick right
for a throw to first than trying to hit the “B” button and instead
hitting the “A” instead, as happens in Sega Sports’ World Series
Baseball 2K3. But Inside Pitch 2003 is perplexing because even with what
seems to be a great control setup doesn’t always perform well in actual
execution. One big problem is when trying to turn a double play. Most
times, there is a hiccup or delay in hitting up on the right thumbstick
to throw to second and the actual throwing of the ball by your player.
So what should be easy tailor-made twin killings instead results in a
lot of runners safely reaching one or both of the bases thrown to.
Pitching and batting aren’t hard to do with the game’s controls,
although there’s a slight issue with the pitching controls. The game
forces you to decide before you pitch if you want to throw a ball or a
strike no mater what specific pitch is selected. You can still move the
pitch around, but if you selected a strike, it will stay in the strike
zone, giving an opponent a better chance of hitting it. Also, a
pitcher’s fatigue doesn’t seem to have an effect on where it will place
either in or out of the strike zone, even though there is a noticeable
lack of velocity on a tired hurler’s deliveries.
Audio features fare better in Inside Pitch 2003, starting with the good
announcing tandem of real baseball announcers Tim McCarver and Joe Buck.
I’m still waiting for the day when Hall of Fame announcer Harry “That
ball’s outta here!” Kalas, who I’ve grown up listening to as the
venerable voice of the Philadelphia Phillies announcing team, is used in
a video game, but until then a good pair like McCarver and Buck will
suffice. It’s not the all-time greatest play-by-play and color
commentary in a sports video game ever, but they do a good job with
providing commentary when appropriate. (There’s also the ability to use
the Xbox customizable soundtrack feature to play whatever music you want
to play ball with.)
Hurting Inside Pitch 2003 more than a home plate collision is its uneven
A.I., which performs extremely strange from time to time and also isn’t
the most baseball smart especially when you are hitting and have runners
on base. There are times when you get a routine grounder to third or
short and throw the ball to first, just as big leaguers would do. But
instead of getting an out, the runner somehow beats the throw, which
never should happen on routine grounders. An unhelpful A.I. makes trying
to navigate the base paths a real adventure. You could have a runner on
third base and hit a single. But instead of the runner being sent home
by the A.I., it’s left up to you to control the runner and send him
home. He’s the runner you shouldn’t have to worry about. It’s the player
going to first and deciding if there’s any opportunity to go to second
that you should be only worried about.
The most egregious error Inside Pitch 2003 commits is by not including a
Franchise mode. You can play a sort-of franchise mode, a three-year
Season mode where you can pull off trades, but nothing such as the
excellently addicting Franchise mode seen in World Series Baseball 2K3
is remotely possible in Inside Pitch 2003. Players you traded for won’t
carry over from one season to the next, which doesn’t make sense at all.
What was Microsoft thinking by not including a franchise mode? Were they
concentrating more on Inside Pitch 2003’s online gameplay? That’s the
only conclusion I can come up with, because every other serious baseball
game on the market today has an involved franchise mode that real
hardcore baseball fans demand having in their baseball video games.
Online gameplay barely gives Inside Pitch 2003 a passing grade. Similar
to the initial versions of Microsoft’s NFL Fever and Inside Drive
series, Inside Pitch 2003 shows potential but contains flaws that must
be taken care of for it to move into serious contention against the
likes of the All-Star Baseball and World Series Baseball franchises.
Inside Pitch 2003 needs at least another year down on the developmental
farm learning how to be a successful big leaguer in the highly
competitive baseball gaming field. If you can deal with Inside Pitch
2003’s disappointing single-player experience and focus solely on its
relatively solid Xbox Live gameplay, then you may want to give Inside
Pitch 2003 a chance. But there are much better and more complete
packaged baseball games available if you’re only into offline baseball
gaming.
