Backyard Baseball 2007

The names are those of old friends – Pablo Sanchez, Angela Delvecchio, Achmed Khan, and Reese Worthington. With them, games like basketball, football and baseball have been much more entertaining and enjoyable.

Along comes the latest iteration in the Backyard franchise, Backyard Baseball 2007. As a long-time fan of the Humongous sports games (and action games, for that matter), there was a certain anticipation of light-hearted fun when the disk was put into the CD reader, but it didn't take long for that mood to turn.

Up front, having played a variety of baseball games, from the massively multiplayer online game to many releases (within the past several years) on a variety of platforms, the most frustrating thing about BB 07 is the swing mechanics. Even at the easiest settings, there is a tiny window in which to swing the bat to make contact … a very tiny window. There also does not seem to be a monumental difference which difficulty setting you choose, nor the power setting (between power and line drive). In each of the games players, if the batter didn’t strike out, he or she (player controlled) either hit a home run or popped out deep in the outfield. Singles were a rare beast, indeed.

The mechanics involve picking the batting power from power, bunt right or left, line drive or (when activated) a special stroke that can cause mayhem for the fielders. Then place the cursor over the area where the pitch will cross the plate and try to time the swing to make contact. Therein lies the frustration – the timing of the batting stroke.

The game is rather simple, in and of itself. The modes involve pickup game, season game, and mini games. The latter has two options – fielder’s challenge and home run derby. Home run derby is self explanatory, but fielder’s challenge is – more or less – the ability to load your team and practice fielding.

Rough around the edges

There are no graphics settings options, so the game comes with default settings and while that will enable the game to play on a variety of machines, the edges of the environments come off with jagged edges. The player models are fine, save that they tend to look two dimensional when they turn to look at the camera while taking their place in the batter’s box. The animations are also repetitious as they step up to the plate. Generally the game is lush, and the fields – which offer a nice variety – are bright and colorful. There is the overall silliness that adds to the fun, with the assortment of special pitches and swings.

Yanked foul

The commentary is annoying. The announcer is not always describing what happens on the field accurately. At one point he intones the hit ball is “yanked foul” when it was actually down the line for a base hit. And it seems that at least 95% of the batters, boys or girls, activate the hokey male voice that says “I’m going to rock you like a hurricane.”  This is not good, at all. There was once a time when the commentary was cute, clever and fun. That seems to be missing with this release.

The game does track stats and you can enter the season and experience the range of reworking your defense and batting alignment to find the right chemistry.

Part of the charm of the game is that it not only features many of the backyard kids that have been around for years, but it is also the only game to have Major Leaguers, as players, in the game. This is because of the format. The players all have diverse and light-hearted interests (Alex Rodriguez likes to play quarterback in football), and the overall tone of the game is kept upbeat and fun.

It is just that the mechanics of the game have a fairly substantial learning curve and that may frustrate younger players.

The one thing, though, about Humongous titles, is that they do not require an install. They play immediately off the disk, create their own save file and you can jump in and go from the moment you pop the disk into the reader. In some ways, the two-dimensional versions of the game, so many years ago, was much more intuitive and appealing to a greater number of players.

The game itself is a combination of simulation baseball and arcade baseball. There are an assortment of pitches that are cartoonish and fun, but you will need to understand baseball strategy to get through the tough games.

Unfortunately, though, the game’s frustrations and repetitions make this a hard recommendation.

Gameplay: 4.5
The announcer makes calls that don’t happen and there is a tiny window for the controls/input devices to be realized in-game. This can make batting very challenging. There seems to be little difference between line drives and home runs in terms of bat power.

Graphics: 6.8
Diverse environments but there are few options for graphical settings. The player models are fine but there are general sharp pixilated edges to the overall look (the dreaded jaggies).

Sound: 4.5
Albert Pujols does the introduction but there is a sound stutter in the cutscene. The commentary just does not feel as bright and fun as in the past when there was a little girl (Sunny Day) and boy doing it all. The commentary is repetitious and not very accurate to what is happening on the field.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
The batting is very reflexive and requires a lot of practice – more so than adult games.

Concept: 5.5
The game has been updated but the gameplay mechanics feel like a step backwards.

Multiplayer: 7.0
Two players can play on the same machine. A bit more fun than the game’s AI.

Overall: 5.2
The game just falls a little short on several levels. The commentary and player dialogue is repetitions and can become annoying and the control scheme is not that good for the platform. This would be better on a console.