Sports Talk Baseball

Review

by Jonathan Sutyak

MLBPA Sportstalk Baseball is only an average game. The talking feature is not enjoyable and turning it off is probably a good idea. As mentioned in the Joe Montana II Sportstalk Football (the first game to utilize the announcer feature) review, the voice is the same one used in a battery operated toy. It is very robotic sounding.

Gameplay is simple but you need to have some fast reflexes because the ball rolls very quickly across the field. Of the three generic stadiums, two have artificial turf causing the ball to roll faster. A strange occurance is when you throw to the wrong base the computer will take the next base. For example, the computer runner is on second base and your second baseman has the ball. If you throw to first base the runner will go for third -- and usually make it.

There is not a great challenge in this game. The most confusing thing is the 10 run rule. Why should a game end if you have a 10 run lead? An option to let you turn this off does not exist. In this game it is so easy to score runs that it is possible to come back in one inning. To say this game is easy might even be an understatement; you can probably finish a season undefeated. Even when the season ends 30 games early it is very much possible to have a player with 100 homeruns. No statistics are kept though, so if you want to know how many homeruns you have you will have to keep track of them yourself.

Despite the name of the game, sound is really lacking in this game. The voice sounds bad and so do other effects, especially when a bat hits a ball. Unfortunately, with so much emphasis put on the announcer the sounds of the ballpark have become secondary. Graphics of the players and two of the stadiums are pretty good. The third stadium, the one without artificial turf, has bright green grass and an obvious error. No matter what stadium you are playing in, the screen of the pitcher facing the batter is the same. This makes no sense when you are playing in the stadium without artificial turf. You go from a screen with turf to a screen with bright green grass in the blink of an eye.

No team logos are featured but that is not a big deal. MLBPA Sportstalk Baseball may have began the revolution of having announcers in baseball games but that doesn't make it spectacular. Overall this is an average baseball game with an irritating announcer.