Review By:  Jared Black
Developer:	3DO
Publisher:	3DO
# of Players:	1-2
Genre:	Sports
ESRB:	Everyone
Online:	No
Accessories:	Memory Card
Date Posted:	3-19-02

Tragically, beyond the awesome gameplay the quality of everything else falls off dramatically. No more is this apparent than in the graphics, which are simply awful. 3DO claims to have improved the graphics (I didn’t play last year’s version), but they’re still among the ugliest to be found on the PS2. The stadium models themselves are detailed and crisp enough, but often sport fuzzy textures in some obvious places (ex: the warehouse at Oriole Park is crap compared to how it’s presented in other baseball games). Animation is jerky and inconsistent at times, and often doesn’t match up with its surroundings. Sliding players are called out even though their foot has touched the bag, players are often called safe even though they don’t appear to be, and the catching animation is downright pathetic. The crowd is flat, bland, and obvious cutouts with little in the way of animation. In short, High Heat 2003 is one ugly game; more like a Saturn game than a PS2 game.

Of particular hideousness is the interface. The front-end is minimalist, with little more than text menus to wade through. Stats screens shown the season only show three or four columns at a time, resulting in a lot of paging through screens (and toggling on/off options) to get a decent look at league leaders. There really is no easy way of comparing the performance of different players. The standings are nothing more than white text on a black screen. The in-game replay camera is awful, using a two-screen camera system that overly complicates things and never gives a decent view of the action. On the whole the interface works, but just barely.

Sound suffers from similar problems. Commentary is bland and stale, with an emphasis on minimalism. While some baseball games include too much annoying commentary, High Heat actually includes too little. Very little commentary is given on the different individual players and stadiums, and practically no attempt is made at giving the two commentators some back and forth banter. As a result, it’s not annoying…just bland. The crowd sounds OK however, even booing (ex: the away team throws over to first repeatedly) and cheering at all of the appropriate times.

HIGHS:

• The most realistic baseball game on the market.
• Very intuitive; batting is easy and natural, pitching requires a great deal of strategy and thought, and throwing to bases has never been handled better.
• Crowd sounds great.

LOWS:

• U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi…
• Bland and basic commentary.
• The front-end interface is blah, and it isn’t even that easy to use. Zork does not a good interface make.

I have high hopes for the High Heat series. In just a few short years, it’s been established as the most realistic baseball sim on the market. The problems it has are mostly cosmetic ones, and can be easily fixed given the proper attention.

Nevertheless, I must judge this game based on what it is, not what it can become. If you’re a hardcore baseball fan that can look past the game’s severe graphic and audio problems (and the lack of a franchise mode), this is the game for you. Unfortunately most baseball fans will probably find themselves preferring All-Star Baseball instead; it’s not quite as realistic, but looks a whole lot better and has a great franchise mode to boot.

Overall Score: 7.6

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