Oh, what a difference a year makes – or does it?

In the 2000 campaign, Milwaukee finished the season as the worst hitting team in the Major Leagues. Though the Brewers pounded out 177 home runs (Minnesota’s 116 was the lowest), the club only hit .246 as a team. Through mid-April of the 2001 season, the Brewers have improved, slightly. No longer last, the Brew crew is 21st in the majors, but the team batting average is .247.

When it came to pitching stats, Boston was fifth overall in 2000, and the Red Sox team ERA of 1.83 leads the majors this season.

Now to the casual observer of baseball, tossing around statistics means little. But baseball is about stats, about percentages and about mental acuity. It’s not just about running, hitting, fielding and throwing; it’s about thinking ahead of the play, knowing situations and understanding what can or can’t be done as dictated by those situations.

It seems that all that is something that EASports™ has forgotten with the PC release of Triple Play Baseball. With few exceptions, this is a great-looking game, but it comes loaded with arcade “fun” meant to enliven the game. What it does is detract from the cerebral pleasure of working a team through a season. Seeing Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds, Sammy Sosa, or Jason Giacombi rip the ball, muscles surging as they power that small piece of wood through a ball hurtling at 90-plus miles per hour at them, and parking over fences almost 400 feet away is a joy. Watching them do it with a baseball bat the size of a redwood is lame.

So what’s new to the game? Well, the rosters have been updated, and there’s a new park for the extreme challenge that places miniature players on the carpet of a giant living room and allows them to smash baseballs into family heirlooms, pets and appliances. A couple of new big league baseball parks have been added to give the game the feel of the current season.  Other than that, little else is new. If you have the PlayStation version of this game, or have seen it, that is exactly what EASports™ has packed into the PC version of the game. However, the graphical elements are much crisper, and more detailed than the PlayStation game.

Say you begin in the target hunt known at the Big League Challenge, pitting players in a home run hitting contest. Extreme challenge actually has you trying to hit targets for bonus points while the classic contest is just a power fest. That really is a good place to get down your swing.

Then you progress to single game, just to warm up.

Milwaukee takes the field against Boston and the Brewers immediately start roughing up Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez (who currently has a 1.23 ERA). By the third inning, the Brewers have pounded out 11 hits and have scored four runs. Martinez is on the ropes. Jeffrey Hammonds (currently only batting .280) is crushing the ball, and every trip to the plate is a success. The only thing that can stop Milwaukee is … whoops! program crash. Oh well, let’s try it again. Exhibition game two, Milwaukee (computer controlled) versus my favorite team (long, long-time fan), the St. Louis Cardinals. Scoreless after the top of the first. Cardinals at bat, one out when Edgar Renteria singles up the middle. Mark McGwire hits a weak roller down the third baseline for the second out. Then Jim Edmonds crushes one 505 feet to right. Ray Lankford makes it back-to-back with a solo shot to right-center. 3-0 Cards after one. Darryl Kile holds Milwaukee’s bats silent. Then the Cardinals unleash the lumber in the bottom of the second. J.D. Drew and McGwire both homer for a four-run inning, and the Cards are on cruise control to the win. Maybe not. Perhaps too many rewards have been unlocked, but the program crashes again.

This happened in four different matchups before a game finally played through.

The audio track hasn’t changed that much. Buck Martinez and Jim Hughson still handle the announcing chores, and their clever patter doesn’t seem all that clever this year – mostly because most of the phrases are retreads from last year and, at times, seemingly have little to do with what it actually happening in the game. How can the Martinez track, proclaiming what a great year a player is having, be applicable with that player is stepping to the plate for the first time in the first game of the season? Of course some of the stadium announcements, for things like Salsa toothpaste, are nice little asides, but wear thin as the season continues.

There are several good points to the Triple Play Baseball title. The graphical elements are very good, and the game animations are fairly life-like. There are some problems with the AI of the game. In one instance, after a baserunner bulldozed the catcher to score, the catcher popped up and ran to the ball, only to collide with the pitcher and both went down and the ball rolled away, allowing the runner to advance another base. The may happen in the minors, but you won’t see that too often in the bigs. Also, a fielder’s choice, no matter where or how it is played, is not a “sharp single.”

The game does support Internet play and is rated for Everyone. There is a bit of a learning curve, as you try to get the control elements down, but once you have a solid grip on the controls, the game is reduced to reflexive play as opposed to thoughtful management. It is a hitter’s game, there is little doubt about that.

Install: Easy.
This game doesn’t take a lot of hard drive space, though you will have to allot time for installing sub-programs, like the match program, which will allow you to play against other players over the Internet.

Gameplay: 6
There are some problems with the AI that causes distractions and takes away from the integrity of the game. Also there seemed to be a video jump in animation where fielders would blip and repeat moves rapidly, but that only occurred in actual games. In the Big League Challenge portion, the play was flawless. But back to the games: I also experience some program crashes, especially as the game progressed into later innings, or one team was crushing the other and unlocking a lot of rewards.

Graphics: 9.
The game likes a 16-bit setup, rather than a 32-bit, but the polygonal characters are motion-captured, which renders a nice, lifelike quality to the game.

Sound: 6.5.
Been there, done that. There is little here that is new to the game.

Difficulty: 6.5.
If you have any kind of hand-eye coordination, you should be able to get into the swing of this game quickly and with success. After the learning curve of 15 minutes to understand the controls, this game becomes somewhat easy when playing against the computer. The game does move faster at upper skill levels, but still it comes down to understanding the controls.

Concept: 7.
There is little here that has changed from the previous incarnation of the game.

Multiplayer: 7.5. 
A lot of players on waiting online to bat your brains in, and some are excellent players and managers. If you don’t have the controls down pat, stay away from this arena until you do.

Overall: 6.5
As stated in the review, I could definitely do without the arcade enhancements, and the AI isn’t all that great. Graphically this program is a solid swing for the fences, but you have to touch all the bases in order for it to be a home run. Triple Play Baseball fails to do that. Despite some problems with the program occasionally crashing, it is not a bad game, but not really up to EASports™’ standards.