Posts tagged baseball
Power Pros (iPhone)
Mar 4th
Started a season yesterday as the Panthers. I’ve changed the difficulty to Normal and set fielding to Semi-Auto, so I need to throw to bases, which makes for a much better game. At this level I’m always in danger of losing, but know that I can win.
It’s definitely an arcade representation of the sport, but it feels right, though it’s very reliant on home runs for scoring. The vast majority of runs the AI and I score are from homers, with very few scored by getting people round the bases a little at a time.
Still, it’s really good stuff, now, even I don’t know what half the stuff on the menu screens mean.
A little help here, Konami?
I guess the faces show happiness/moral and affect performance and the colours under the player names seem to show the positions they can play. I think. Shame there’s not more help for that side of things.
Go Panthers!
When playing ball, though, it’s absolutely great and I think it’s my favourite baseball game on the iPhone. I find that the best way to judge a baseball game is by how enjoyable the pitching is compared to the batting. In many games, pitching seems to be a chore to get through before you can bat again, but Power Pros has an excellent, quick pitching interface that means I rather enjoy that side of things.
I’m even manually selecting my pitchers and making substitutions during a game, which shows I must be getting into it.
Power Pros (iPhone)
Mar 3rd
Big day for baseball fans yesterday, as spring training started with a win for the Mets (boo!) over the Braves (yay!). Not the best possible start, then, but it’s always very exciting when the baseball comes back. The new release of MLB At Bat came out yesterday, costing a whopping £8.99. However, it’s a brilliant app, including audio streaming of all regular season games, video streaming of some, push notifications of events, video highlights of every game, etc. If you’re a baseball fan with an iPhone it’s a necessary expense, rather than a luxury.
Anyway, I decided I need to play some baseball, so dug out Power Pros, which I’d bought in some 99p sale and never really touched.
Cute little baseball guys. Aww.
All I did was a three-inning Exhibition match on the default settings, so I haven’t got much of an opinion yet. It certainly seems good, but I need to investigate further.
It was very, very easy – I won by miles – but that may have been a fluke. If not, I’ll just have to play with the difficulty settings until I hit the sweet spot.
What I do know is that it looks nice, runs smoothly, controls well and is easy to play as it’s all done in portrait mode. I think I like it rather a lot, but we’ll have to wait and see if I can get a decent challenge out of it.
Baseball Superstars 2010 Free (iPhone)
Oct 22nd
This is the sequel to one of my favourite games, but I haven’t bought the full version. Mostly because it didn’t look like it was enough of an upgrade to be worth the vast sum of £3.49.
Luckily, there’s now a demo version, which I played for a while last night. As expected, it’s rather unexciting. It’s better, don’t get me wrong. The graphics are nicer, I like choosing a goal at the start of a season and it’s good to have touchscreen menus. It just doesn’t quite feel different enough. As soon as they drop the price I’ll probably jump on it, but for now I’ll stick with the 2009 version, unless further play of the demo brings out any hidden depths.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 27th
Things are going better now after the disaster of the previous season. My batting average is up, my team, though seemingly doomed to mid-table obscurity, are at least doing better than last season and my coach even tells me I’m awesome now and again.
There’s no way on earth my popularity is going to be high enough to let me continue to play after the end of the tenth season, so I’ll probably just delete my player and start again. I suppose it’s possible I may play some actual full games of baseball sometime, but I just love this mode so much that I never seem to want to.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 24th
Oh dear. The sixth season of my quest to become a star baseball player isn’t going well. I’m not doing too badly myself, pretty much keeping my batting average at the .278 level. I know that’s actually really rubbish, but by my standards, I’m happy. I’m building up my stats when I can and I seem to be getting better.
The trouble is, I’m not able to build stats a lot of the time because I have to waste training time by going on dates to raise my morale. You see, your morale is based on your team’s performance – and my team, the Dragons, are doing incredibly badly this season, sitting one place off the bottom of the league with only four games to go. It’s a problem – I can’t be a great player in this team right now, but I can’t change teams either. Loyalty’s a bitch.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 23rd
A tale of great loss and woe. Not about my fifth season, specifically. That went very well. My batting average went up, my team won the league and the post-season stuff, my popularity went over 150 so I could buy new shoes. That was all really good.
No, the loss and woe came when I hit my first home run. Yes, in four seasons I’d not hit a homer, but then near the beginning of the fifth season I sent the ball sailing out of the park. Unfortunately, in my rush to try and take a screenshot I managed to quit the game – and the game only saves at the end of each game. So when I restarted the game my home run was lost. I’ve not scored another one since. Sigh.
There’s a screenshot I did manage to take. I suppose it’s quite exciting in its way. Will the ball be caught? Will I reach base safely?
It’s still not as exciting as a picture of a home run would have been, though.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 22nd
I’ve finished four seasons as my little batter chap now. The third season was the best so far, with my team winning the title and everybody happy and some bonus money for me and a general sense of hurrah!
The fourth season was a disaster. My batting average fell from a bad .278 to a pitiful .261. My team kept losing, which meant my morale plummeted, so instead of going out and training in my time off I had to go on dates to try and improve my mood.
However, every date failed, so my morale stayed at about zero for most of the season and my performance on the field suffered accordingly.
That nightmare season is over now, though, and morale resets at the start of each season so I’m hoping for better in my fifth season. I really wish I could get my popularity up, though. To extend your career past its tenth season you need a popularity rating of over six hundred, I think, and mine’s only about 140. Not good at all.
Baseball Superstars 2009 (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Yes, so I took the plunge and downloaded the full version of Baseball Superstars. I’ve got to something at lunchtime, after all.
I’ve set myself up as a batter on the Dragons. I’m not doing too well so far. The screenshot below shows how I’m doing most of the time.
I am getting better, though. Partly due to training to raise my stats (when I’m not using my spare time to go on dates to recover morale), partly due to getting better at the game and partly because of the lucky purple helmet that I spent an entire year’s salary on. Sometimes I’m even getting screens like the one below after a game.
But not very often.
Baseball Slugger: Home Run Race 3D (iPhone)
Jul 20th
Despite playing a lot of 9 Innings and Superstars, I didn’t neglect Baseball Slugger. I played a few rounds of the Arcade mode, but I mainly played online.
I did, sometimes see this screen.
But more often I saw this one.
I got enough golden balls to complete my Jaguars costume and buy a new bat, though, which was nice.
9 Innings: Pro Baseball Lite (iPhone)
Jul 20th
After playing some Baseball Superstars Lite I tried out 9 Innings: Pro Baseball Lite.
It looks superficially similar to Baseball Superstars, but with a slightly more realistic look. That sums up how it plays, too. You don’t get any pirates or nurses playing baseball in this, just athletic-looking men. The pace is slower, the pitching requires that you time button presses and it seems a lot easier to mess up your fielding and it’s a lot harder to hit the ball anywhere useful. It lacks the mode where you create a player and play as them, but you get special tasks to perform in games to gain points to upgrade your coach.
It, like Baseball Superstars, is a very good game and I played it a lot. I think I’m coming down on the side of Baseball Superstars, mainly because I like the RPG-type mode and find it easier and quicker to play, but I’ve not made decision yet and both games seem very worth £1.79.