As a self-professed baseball aficionado, when a new Major League game is released, it receives a bit more critical attention than other sports (it should be noted that before joining the ranks of video-game journalism, there was a rather lengthy stint working in mid-sized newspapers – including close approximately eight years as a sports editor). There is something so fundamentally simple and complex about the sport that it is compelling.

The pitcher selects a pitch, tries to hit a location. The batter challenges the pitch and if successful moves onto the basepaths. The outfielders have to watch the runner, determine the best strategic location to return the ball. It’s one-on-one challenges, overall strategic play within the teamwork concept, and can turn on an errant hop.

Everything but the last holds true in MLB Dugout Heroes, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online game from GamesCampus and Wisecat. Ok, the free-to-play genre has often meant shallow and repetitious gameplay, and while baseball is somewhat repetitious, it is also situational, which means a variety of options are available with almost every pitch thrown.

But the developers behind this game had simplified it a lot. It’s one human player against another, with a Major League roster (featuring the real players, though some of the character renderings are not close, but not to worry – and this will be explained in a bit), but you don’t have to position fielders to make the play, the AI does that; all you do is pitch and determine what base to throw to if the ball is hit successful, or hit and decide if you want to go for extra bases or steal a base. It’s actually a very fundamental game on several levels.

You pick a team as your game team, then go into a lobby that is separated by your team ranking (yes, as you play you accrue experience points and raise from rank 1 to 2, et cetera), get into a game that can run three or five innings (other options include extending the game if there is a tie at the end of the pre-determined game length) and play ball.

It’s actually all very easy to jump into and play. You can call a time-out to substitute players – who will wear down through successive games, and pitcher’s arms will become wearing making you keep an eye on your rotation and innings pitched by your relievers … you know, just like the real game.

Teams don’t actually play in their home stadiums, and the default seems to be AT&T park (Ok, the park itself is nice, but if you hit a long ball and see the water beyond the outfield fence, there are palm trees sticking up out of it … if that is indeed supposed to be water). There are only three parks used for the all of the games.

Batting is handled through the mouse. You can alternate between the normal swing, or a power swing, and you can bunt. You then use the mouse to align the bat with the pitch location (you have to move the bat once the pitch is on the way and try to make that contact point) and use the mouse buttons to swing the bat at the ball. Once on the basepaths, the keyboard comes into play. Q and E are the ways to advance or retreat runners when the ball is in play, and stealing is a keyboard driven combination.

For the defense, the mouse is used for pitching and the keyboard for the location on throws for hit balls. You use the mouse, as the pitcher, to select the pitch and its location, and then use the mouse buttons for the pitching meter. The first meter (all benchmarked with mouse input) is the power, while the second is accuracy. If the ball is hit, fielders automatically move on it (they can make diving stabs) and you use the WASD keys to determine what base to throw to. The Q and E keys are used for cutting off the throws.

It’s that simple, and that means that just about anyone can jump into this game and play it.

Graphically the game takes on a bit of a cartoon look with cel-shading on the characters. The animation itself is smooth and though the characters bear a little similarity to their big-league counterparts (beard or no beard, hair color), there may be height and weight differences, but that’s about it. Still, these graphics won’t challenge a high-end graphics card and the game plays very well.

Actually, in all the games played, there did not seem to be a lag issue that made the game unbearable. In fact, every game played was smooth and enjoyable.

The audio, though, is borderline terrible. Chris Yamauchi and Jonathan Stypula provided the play-by-play and commentary and if you are a baseball fan, watch games on television and are used to professional baseball broadcasters, turn the sound off. Their banter not only can be way off base, but it is not even in the ballpark (pun intended) in terms of baseball. Things like “the crowd excitedly cheers as the batter steps up to the plate” just sound like it does not belong in an MLB venue, while more or less stating the obvious.

Like some other FtP (free-to-play) titles, MLB Dugout Heroes has a micro-transaction model in place. As you play and accomplish tasks, you earn nuts, which can be exchanged in the game store for players and minor buffs. The bigger buffs, though, will cost you Campus Credits, which is the cash-driven element. You can buy credits in the ratio of 1,000 credits per $10 spent.

MLB Dugout Heroes is a simplified baseball game that does have some flaws, but these are mostly attributed to the way the game has been simplified for any user. The players met in competition all seemed nice enough and the games ranged from extremely tactical, with base stealing and such, to blow-outs – both for and against this gamer. Still, this is an entertaining game that transcends the flaws and provides nice little forays into the world of baseball.

Gameplay: 7.5
The game elements are easy to understand and use and the AI seems decent enough to render out a solid and enjoyable experience. There seems to be few problems with synchronizing with another player or with lag during the game itself.  

Graphics: 7.8
A bit on the cartoonish side, but vibrant and the animation is really pretty good.

Sound: 6.0
One wonders if the announcing team has ever watched a televised baseball game. The banter can be off-base. 

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 7.0
The game has been simplified almost to the point where it would drive a baseball die-hard crazy, but generally speaking, the dev team did a nice job making this game accessible.

Multiplayer: 8.0
The community, as it stands at the time of the review, seemed like good gamers out for an entertaining day at the park. The conversations had were friendly and good-natured.

Overall: 7.5
This game won’t turn the MMOG market on its ear or advance the baseball video-game genre. What it does do, though, is provide an accessible and entertaining game that can be played on lower-end systems, with players hopping in and playing for short periods here and there. What else is there to say but this is nice little bit of fun.