MVP Baseball 2003

In baseball, if a pitcher starts losing control the manager yanks him. It’s a smart thing to do because baseball tends to flow in streaks. This is why EA Sports came out to the mound and pulled the ailing Triple Playseries. Never a critical favorite, it was too arcade and not enough simulation. Triple Play just wasn't performing, and fans were beginning to notice what the other baseball sims were doing better (almost everything). So rookie MVP 2003 trots out to the mound for its day in the sun. It’s a step in the right direction.

MVP looks great. The field, players, and animations are all smooth and realistic looking. Instead of placing the camera directly behind the batter in the default view, they’ve gone for a slightly tilted camera that better simulates a batter’s view of the ball screaming in. The only graphical glitch is that the batting box is too small visually. Curves don’t break correctly, change-ups don’t drop enough, and this just plain looks weird. However, the mini-diamond that shows the situation (including how much of a lead the opposing team's runners take) is just about perfect.

Rather than simply demanding you keep your eye on the ball, MVP has a batting box that predicts where the ball will go. This makes hitting too easy and pitching a bit too hard. A pitcher has too little time to get the ball icon within the strike zone. Other sims do it better. The other problem is with fielding. You have decent control (they avoided World Series Baseball’s rookie error) but changing players is neither quick nor easy and the game forces your player to dive when you don’t want to. Tossing it back to base isn’t as intuitive or smooth as it should be either. You’ll get used to it but, again, other games do it much better.

MVP is a strong debut but it just isn’t a contender for the Hall of Fame.--Andrew S. Bub...(click for less)

In baseball, if a pitcher starts losing control the manager yanks him. It’s a smart thing to do because baseball tends to flow in streaks. This is why EA Sports came out to the mound and pulled the ailing Triple Playseries. Never a critical favorite, it was too arcade and not e...(click for more.)