LADYDRAGON.COM - VR Baseball 2000

Looking at the company line, you might get the impression that VR Baseball 2000 is a sports simulator designed for hard-core players only, which just might be what VR Sports intended. Though the game itself is quite the contrary. It seems much more a game for beginners and action oriented baseball fans rather than hard-core simmers. This may confuse and disappoint many of those hoping for an ultra-realistic baseball simulator, but is perfect for those only interested in a less complicated, fast-paced, action oriented game of America's favorite past-time, Baseball. (As a side note, baseball was invented by the British, not Americans as many might think :)

With competition like Triple Play 99, and Microsoft Baseball 3D, it might have been better if VR Baseball 2000 was marketed toward the less serious of virtual baseball players, seeing that it can't compete with the many features of the above two titles.

That said, VR Baseball 2000 is not, by any means, a bad game. In fact its quite good, and is a lot fun and very addicting less a few flaws and annoying little glitches. The first and foremost of these flaws is the management restrictions that are placed opon the player. For instance, you cannot change the starting rotation of your players nor can you save changes to your daily lineup. This might put off alot of players, but for those who just wanna play some ball, it helps to keep things less complicated.

This'll be close....

Yerrr OUT!

If you can overlook the lack of management features, and concentrate on the gameplay, you'll find Baseball 2000 to be one of the most entertaining baseball SIMMs available.

The graphics are spectacular, built around the highly anticipated (and hyped) Messiah graphics engine, player models are 20,000+ polygons. Which simply means that they look smoother and more realistic. With this level of detail you might expect it to run extremely slow, but actually it runs in excess of 30 frames per second. While the models look great, the same cant be said about the textures. Textures are blurred and seems to have been stretched to fit the mesh model. This game could have looked a lot better if higher quality textures would have been used.

Perhaps the most immersive and just plain coolest part of Baseball 2000 has got to be its player interface. There is none! That's right, there is no visible player interface. To control your players you use your controller, and good timing. For example, when batting, to hit the ball harder and higher, you simply hold down the action key longer. Really cool, and makes it feel a little more realistic.

VR Baseball 2000 is a great game for those wanting to skip all the complicated management features and get right down to the action and play some ball.

Company:
VR Sports
www.vrsports.com

Category:

Sports

NOTES:

Interest: 75%
Control: 83%
Graphics: 86%
Sound: 78%
Originality:70%

TOTAL : 78%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 200 MHz processor

Memory:
32MB RAM

Hard Drive:
50 MB +

Sound Card:
DirectSound compatible sound card
Video:
Direct 3D Hardware accelerator required

DEMO