Archive for Gaming

Baseball Superstars 2011, released earlier this month for iPhone and iPod Touch, is another in the Baseball Superstars franchise begun by Gamevil in 2007.

I acquired the game this past Friday and will be reviewing various aspects of it over the course of the next week or two.

In this dispatch, I’ll provide my first impressions of the game and some comments on the Exhibition mode.

First Impressions
You might have guessed, owing both to the Asian people and the Asian other things in the video above, that this game is deeply influenced — aesthetically, at least — by Asian cartoons. I’m tempted to say “Japanese” cartoons (as Strong Bad does in the video below), except for Gamevil is actually a Korean-based company, and I think it’s right and good to celebrate all our Asian brothers and sisters.

Whether for these aesthetic considerations, or for other reasons entirely, the game can be overwhelming at first. There are no less than seven options on the main menu — including Exhibition, My League, Season, and something called Mission. The literature for the game suggests that the My League mode “contains unique RPG elements in a sports title,” which sounds intriguing. It also says that Mission Mode “demands finest skills.” That’s unfortunate, of course, for those of us who possess only middling skills.

Like many swords, this is the double-edged kind. On the one hand, the number of options for play are alot for a newcomer to comprehend; on the other, if one measure of a quality game is that it can be played for some time, then the myriad options bode well for this.

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2K Sports, makers of sporting video games, have announced via their Facebook page (and maybe some other places, too — I don’t know) that Roy Halladay will grace the cover of MLB 2K11.

The news demands at least three questions, which I ask below and attempt to answer:

Q. Is it possible to announce that Roy Halladay will be on the cover of MLB 2K11 without making it just seem like a giant advertisement for the game?
A. That’s tough. I’m going with “yes,” though.

Q. Is grace only ever used as a verb to describe how someone’s on the cover of a book or album or periodical or something?
A. I don’t think so. It’s also common to say that so-and-so has graced us with his/her presence. Still, its usage is pretty specific.

Q. How will the game compare to MLB ’11: The Show?
A. Probably not excellently. Also, Kevin Butler won’t be in the commercials for it.

The thing I like about poems — one thing, at least — is how you can describe interesting texts without actually having to write or read them. Dave Berman does this in his poem “Piano and Scene,” for example, when he invokes a “Russian novel / whose 45 chapters are set / on 45 consecutive Valentine’s Days.” There’s a chance — a strong chance — that the concept of such a novel is better than the novel itself ever could be. At the very least, it requires way less effort merely to write/read the description. And effort, as you’ll know, is the enemy of the enthusiast.

Nor is this merely the case with books; the idea is applicable to all manner of texts. Certainly, it can apply to video games, as Kenny Powers’ Home Run Fiesta: Deep Inside Mexico — an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch — demonstrates.

The game, it needs to be said, never claims to be much more than a thinly veiled promotional tool for Season Two of HBO’s Eastbound and Down, so any criticism leveled against it must be tempered duly. The thing is, were you to tell me about a Kenny Powers-inspired baseball game, were you to say that it featured Powers himself spewing all manner of invective, and were you to continue by noting that said game featured some heavily pixelated and equally tube-topped Latina cheerleaders — well, “excellent to that,” is what I’d say.

Unfortunately — as in the case of Berman’s hypothetical Russian novel — the game itself is unable to live up to the concept. Perhaps its greatest flaw is that the game makes use of the device’s accelerometer. “To swing,” read the instructions, “flick your phone forward. Time your swing carefully, and the faster you flick it, the harder you’ll swing.” Perhaps life is different in your tax bracket, but I, personally, don’t feel comfortable thrusting my iPod all around. Furthermore, there doesn’t necessarily seem to be a strict correlation between the timing and strength of said “flick” and the swing it produces.

Conclusion: promising concept, probably impossible to realize. Use of accelerometer is awkward and unnecessary.