Checking In

Baseball games have come and gone this season, but the only significant news is that there will be a new patch issued for Out of the Park Baseball in a couple of days. I hope. Since this patch was promised as a “Christmas present” in 2004, many have speculated that Markus actually meant an early present for Chrsitmas 2005. No word on what is fixed or added by the patch.

Sean Sullivan continues to plug away at his PureSim Baseball game. He has a very loyal following and the game is much better than when first release a couple of years ago. The real shame in all of this is that I don’t have time to really take a hard look at the game. I am an OOTP fanatic because of online leagues. Playing baseball games solo lost its luster after I joined my first online league, and there really isn’t a significant PureSim multiplayer community.

However, if I did play baseball solo, I probably would choose PureSim over OOTP6. I don’t like PureSim’s minor league structure, but everything else is set up to attract people who like to customize everything. Sort of the ultimate tweak file game.

Speaking of baseball pruducts, it just amazes me how many years we see the same reaction to baseball arcade/action games. One group will quickly proclaim that game A is the best thing since sliced bread. Another group will say they don’t like the batter/pitcher interface. Yet another group will complain that some major baseball aspect is seriously broken in the game. Bill Harris will lead a concerted effort to “slider” out the problem. Everyone will seek Bill Abner’s slider settings. Repeat and rinse.

High Heat was the last gasp folks. Until a serious sim engine is attached to these arcade games, this cycle will continue. High Heat 2001 was the closest thing to a serious arcade baseball game that I’ve seen in my lifetime. It failed because of many lingering bugs that even the community couldn’t fix and tweak out of the game.

But that is is. Game over. Will never happen again. If you seriously believe that EA Sports or Sony (my God, Sony!) is going to make a serious baseball product, then you really aren’t looking for an acurate baseball simulation. So be happy with what you have.

It won’t get any better.

This is why I steadfastly support PureSim and OOTP. These are baseball chess games. And they deserve to be played.

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2 thoughts on “Checking In”

  1. Chirs, as you know I am a console gamer, and I do not care much for online play. OOTP and FM2005 are the only PC games that I actually spend any amount of time playing, and lately there has not been much time for either. It has been a long time since I did any solo OOTP play; weekly exports to the IOSBL is really it for me!

    With that said, I agree with you about the various baseball titles – on the console front, High Heat was the last good "sim." Of course there have been other "interesting" games such as the VR Baseball title (’97 maybe), but mostly hit or miss. I have not played a console baseball game this year, but I do not expect my console baseball to be perfect; I just want to have fun. I may pass all together this year and just pick up something for the PSP – if someone can make something interesting that plays games in under 30 mins.

    Speaking of time, that is my biggest problem with modern console baseball titles: they take too damn long.

    I have never seen PureSim before – I will have to give it a try. What is the difference between the free version and the full version?

  2. There isn’t any difference. I think you have to pay to get the future versions, but I’m not sure how his paying beta process works exactly.

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