Next Gen Baseball Video Games (1 Viewer)

[Luke Foust]

I have been playing High Heat Major League Baseball 2003 for the ps2 (which according to many reviews plays the best out of all current ps2 video games) for the past couple of weeks. The physics in this game are so bad. The ball just stops rolling in the outfield for no reason and the physics off of the bat are terrible. So here is my question: why can't developers seem to get baseball right? I think great strides have been made in many other sports games (mostly football) to get them as real as possible as baseball lags year after year.
As I think back, the best baseball games I played were on 8bit and 16bit systems. Do you think they will ever iron out the kinks or do we just have to deal with crappy baseball games?

 

[JoshF]

Luke:

I gotta disagree regarding HH2003. I think the physics are pretty good in this game. Opposite field slices curve just right and even bounce with some extra spin. Errors make sense based on player position and ball rotation. Carems are just right and even roll just right based on the slope of the various fields.

The ball stopping rolling in the outfield may be because of backspin. I've seen the opposite happen on line drives with top spin.

Compare that to games like All-Star baseball where every single hit seems to be have the same exact ball rotation. Or Triple Play where the pitches look like slo-mo whiffle balls.

I do agree that baseball games could be better, but I've seen some huge problems in Madden, NHL2k3, FIFA, and others that make the problems in HH2k3 look pretty excusable.

Just my opinion as a former player, of course.

-Josh