Reviews / previews
Like its new namesake, Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001 can hit the ball a
long way. But like that Chicago Cubs slugger, in reaching for the fences, it strikes out a fair amount, too.
Overall, HH2001 provides as comprehensive a baseball simulation as we've seen since the days of the Tony LaRussa Baseball and Front Page Sports lines. In overall depth and breadth, from small, thoughtful touches like the ability to search for a given player to full-blown features like a batting-practice mode that allows players to get a feel for the game's mechanics in a non-competitive setting, it is virtually unrivaled among computer baseball games.
The developers haven't dumped an interface on top of the batter/pitcher confrontation, and it gives a sense of the artistry and timing involved at each end. The stats aren't as wonderfully obsessive as those in Strat-O-Matic CD-ROM Baseball, but they are far more than most people will need. The interface is clean and clear, and important functions are kept close to its surface. The career mode--one season leads into another--makes the game into a sports/role-playing hybrid (albeit without the money angle of Baseball Mogul or MS Baseball 2001) and starting with the second season, you get to draft rookies into your farm system. Also, the mechanism that shows the placement of each pitch relative to the strike zone is both useful andvisually jazzy.
But while HH2001 does many things well, it doesn't do some as well as it should.
League mode, where you run a single team against the rest of the league--playing out key games in 3D while letting the game simulate incidental contests--is one of the best parts of HH2001. Yet this is where the game suffers some Major League crashes. Trying to resume the schedule after playing out the all-star game, only to have the game drop to the desktop, lost more than a month of unsaved progress. Then it happened again. And again.
The box scores for simulated games are wonderfully detailed and count the number of strikes each pitcher has thrown, but occasionally, they didn't match the numbers that appeared on the schedule calendar.
Also, if you're playing with injuries enabled, you'll never stop configuring your team--moving players down to the disabled list, finding a suitable replacement in the minors, and finally finding a league with an opening to take the replacement player back once the injury has healed. The only way to automate any of this is to turn the team over to the computer, then immediately take it back, which allows it to alter your lineups, creating more work when you resume control.
The multiplayer game has been beefed up considerably from the exhibition play in the last edition and you can link directly or play over The Zone, HEAT.net, or Mplayer. A half-dozen attempts to play on The Zone failed (the game doesn't let you know about incompatibility of the software at both ends before you try to connect) and when I got into a largely lag-free gameit ended in a crash.
The ballparks are serviceable, but feel thin compared to the full 3D ones in Triple Play 2001 and the players are oddly squinty-faced when seen at the plate and ogre-like in the optional walk-up. The background crowd sounds are great, but the catcalls from the stands and the on-field patter are disembodied and repetitive. The announcer manages to keep up with the action better than most, but he kept describing pop-ups as fly balls and repeated himself whenever a player walked.
For all the complaints, I've enjoyed my time in HH2001, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it again before something else comes along. But it doesn't live up to its potential. This is a good game that's left on the verge of becoming a great one.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
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