World Series Baseball 2K1

Product Description What better way to pass the time than with the national pastime? Thanks to World Series Baseball 2K1, you can bring home the whole year's worth of Major League Baseball--from the earliest spring exhibition game to the last dramatic out of the fall classic. The game features everything it should: updated 2000 MLB rosters and stats for all National League and American League teams; all the parks, including San Francisco's new Pacific Bell Park and Seattle's Safeco Field; and all the management functionality needed to replace a tired pitcher or send in a left-handed pinch hitter. And World Series Baseball 2K1 raises the bar for baseball games in several ways. The Dreamcast's graphics abilities allow for finely detailed 3-D models of the players and stadiums as well as realistic weather and lighting effects. The game cribs some of baseball's most recognizable batting and pitching signatures, so you can expect to see Gary Sheffield's manically waving bat and Hideo Nomo's tornadolike delivery. As if that doesn't make the game real enough, these players even sustain realistic injuries. Also, you can use a TV-style hot-zone chart to track a batter's ability to connect in different corners of the strike zone--indispensable when choosing your next pitch from a palette of 32 variations on fastballs, breaking balls, and knuckleballs. And to make sure your opponent doesn't steal your signs, you can make your pitch selections through the separately sold Visual Memory Unit. Amazon.com Sega has had great success with its previous sports titles for the Dreamcast, so everyone was waiting for them to hit one out of the park with the release of World Series Baseball 2K1. In many ways they have, but the game suffers from enough bugs and has so few options that true baseball fans will be crying foul. Stadiums and players are rendered in glorious high-resolution detail, to the point where it's easy to recognize a player by looking at his face. Similarly, most of the animations look terrific--especially diving catches and quick across-the-body throws. We also enjoyed the pitching and batting interface, which is more complex than that found in most baseball games but becomes a lot of fun after a little practice. Unfortunately, the game is all downhill from there. Once a ball is hit, players are forced to sit and watch the computer field it. The lack of control is absolutely infuriating, especially since Sega hyped this game's realism from the beginning of its development. The crowd sounds are anemic and there is no color commentary, which is just as well considering how terrible the play-by-play announcer is. If you really love baseball, you'll really hate World Series Baseball 2K1. For casual fans who prefer flashy graphics and a fun pitching/batting contest to thorough stat tracking and the ability to field the ball, this game is a home run. --T. Byrl BakerPros:Gorgeous stadiums Nice TV-like presentation Cons:No fielding Stuttering animations Lacks fun extras