World Series Baseball 2K2
Score: 55% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Sega Sports Developer: Sega Media: CD/1 Players: 1 - 2 Genre: Sports
Graphics & Sound: If you've ever seen a game made by Sega Sports before, you'll know that hands down, the graphics will be tight. This goes without exception to World Series Baseball 2K2. Player models are great, with realistic animations and body types, and stadiums look identical to their real-life counterparts. However, not all is well in the world of graphics. Normally one of the best features from Sega, the crowds look worse than the cardboard cutouts I've grown to know and accept on the first PlayStation. The lack of attention to detail was also apparent when I found players who are black that should be white, and vice versa. Staying with the theme of Up and Down categories is the Sound department. First off, Sega blew everyone away two years ago with the commentary for NFL 2K, and ever since, has been better and better. That is, until WSB 2K2. This year's version has no color commentary, just one very bland announcer who says the same catch phrases over and over. Much like the lone play-by-play man, the sound effects also suck. You can tell the crowd's cheering section is turned on and off by the press of a button. One second they're as quiet as a mouse, the next, bring on the automated cheers! The other effects are just as bad, very lame bats hitting balls, balls being caught in the leather glove, all could have been over-emphasized much more. It's almost like the creators of this game didn't care what the final version ended up as.
Gameplay: If you had the pleasure of NOT playing WSB 2K1 last year, let me be envious of you. Mainly, the game was atrocious due to its gameplay. Fielding was automatic, and the pitching was stupid. Well, one year later, things aren't much improved. Sega wised up and made fielding manual, but it's just as bad. When your fielder catches the ball, there are no animations making you believe he did anything to field the ball. It's truly like something out of Nintendo's R.B.I. Baseball. Plus, when a ball is hit in the infield, expect the ball to go by your guy about 80 percent of the time because the ball is hit incredibly fast. The pitching is just as bad, which I am still amazed by. Sega's poster boy for this game is one of the best pitchers in baseball, Pedro Martinez, but every pitch seems to be going about 20 miles an hour. The setup for it is nice though. They show you where the batter's hot and cold spots are in the strike zone, so you can aim for the right place. However, when you have time to pick your nose at the plate before the ball gets there, it really doesn't matter. Which leads me to my next point: the hitting. It may be the lone bright spot of the game, although it's a very dim light. I'll say the ball isn't juiced, but it isn't staying in the park often either. It's not that everyone is hitting home runs, it's that everyone is getting hits. World Series Baseball 2K2 features several modes like its other sports counterparts: Exhibition, Season, Playoffs, Home Run Derby, Franchise, and Network. Once again, these game modes had a chance to be great, but instead failed miserably. Exhibition, Season, and Playoffs are all standard like other games. I'm always a fan of the Home Run Derby, but this one was so easy because the higher the difficulty level, the easier it is to hit, since the pitch is in the same spot every time. The more difficulty added makes the batters even stronger than before. The Franchise had the most promise, as you can bring up players from the minors (you can also in Season), and play GM in the off-season. However, the free agency is much like a draft, each week you pick a player for you roster spot until you're full. Where's the enticement of the big contract??? If you really want to, you can play online with Network, but why would you with this game? There's also a Create-a-Player mode, but again, why waste the time?
Difficulty: There are three incredibly easy levels to WSB 2K2: Rookie, Pro, and All-Star. Like I said earlier, pitching is easy, and batting becomes easier as the players get stronger by the difficulty. The fielding problem never gets better, whether it's on Rookie or All-Star.
Game Mechanics: If you're going to be playing this anytime soon, the good news is that there is very little loading time. Do you know why? Because there is nothing put into World Series Baseball 2K2! No extra features were added, no incredible graphics and sound, nothing. Still, a whole VMU will be used in the process of saving. The game controls themselves weren't anything tough to figure out. I did get lost in a lot of the game menus. Many of them would say press O or X to go Back, but Back meant two different things for the two different buttons. With no true clear-cut leader in the Baseball Gamers World this year, World Series Baseball 2K2 had the chance to go out on top, but instead flopped like last year. The game is better than a year ago, but that's not saying much. As the Dreamcast nears the final power button of its short-lived life, I guess it's only fair to make a half-assed game. The creators probably thought, 'Why should we waste the money to make this game?' My response to that is, 'Why should we waste the money to play this game?' America's pastime definitely passed on with World Series Baseball 2K2.
-Red Dawg, GameVortex Communications AKA Alex Redmann
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