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Great baseball game in my collection

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love baseball! I love it probably more than anything, besides videogames. This game is really good, and deserves an MVP. I think Jason Giambi is guilty of taking steroids. Who here thinks that he won't be asked to be a cover athlete again?

MC White

Great title

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I admittedly haven't played any other baseball titles for the XBOX (as I just bought my XBOX itself), but I've played a few titles on other platforms and on the PC. This is one of the best baseball titles I've played so far. I'm not really a sports fan in general, but sports video games have always been really enjoyable. This game does what I need it to do, and I haven't noticed any flaws so far.

It feels like it doesn't have all the major league teams, but maybe I'm just thinking it doesn't and it really does? Not sure. It does have the classic uniforms (home and away) for every team in the game, and that's interesting...tho, you can't always tell they're "classic" uniforms (at least I can't for a lot of the teams.) I also like the fact that each team's stadium is present, and they're all really beautiful in their animation/rendering (the fans aren't rendered anywhere near the way the players are, of course, but it's all really nicely done either way, and it's not hard to imagine being right there at each ballpark with each park's different setup.) It's interesting to check out each team's stadium, and compare them with the real life stadiums. You can also choose between day and night, which is cool.

The gameplay is fairly simple, tho I had to check the manual to see exactly how baserunning works and sometimes I still find it a bit confusing getting the baserunners to go to each base and stop. You have to point toward the base you went the player to run to and hit one button to advance, one button to go back to the previous base, and a third button to stop (and instead of stopping at the base and not continuing, the runner just stops in the middle of the bases wherever he was when you hit stop.) That gets confusing when you have 2 or 3 runners you're trying to deal with seperately, but it's no big deal usually. The fielding is fairly simple as well, tho you might want to make sure you know which button dives for the ball (still haven't been in enough situations to figure out how to try to jump to get a homerun or near homerun.) Throwing the ball to each base is very simple (1 button for each base, on the controller as a diamond, the right button to first, the left button to third, etc.) I've played some games where this common sense setup isn't in play and it get's really confusing, but this game (like most) has it setup properly.

The batting and pitching I like...you can set it up to show exactly where the pitcher will throw the ball, but it's rather difficult sometimes trying to set the cursor right on the pitch in time and keeping your focus on the timing of the pitch as well (the computer can easily strike you out if you time pitches wrong...and if you swing late, it'll often go foul as it would in real life.) I've never played with that strike zone area turned off, so I can't rate the other method. Pitching is set up the same way, with a few pitching choices (it seems as if the pitching choices for each pitcher are very slim), you hit the direction of the pitch you want and then use the cursor to set a path (I think there might be another option where you don't use the cursor with pitching as well, but I've never used it...always keep it, or I'd probably never get it in the strike zone.) One thing that's weird is, most of the time, you choose a pitch, but the pitcher shakes his head and refuses to throw that pitch- I've no idea what the deal is with that, but it's weird to say the least.

There are the common options with season play (162 games would probably take forever), and others such as quick start, whereit starts you off with two random teams just so you can start playing without going thru any choices or options...exhibition play, make your own team/rosters, etc. I've only used the exhibition mode so far and started a season (set it to 20 games only) but haven't started it yet. The nice thing with the XBOX is the hard drive that allows you to save these games without needing a memory card you'd have to pay extra for...with the hard drive, you could save numerous seasons with created teams/rosters, etc and never run out of space.

So, a great game overall...enough choices to keep most sports fans happy, realistic stadiums to choose from, what seems like full major league rosters with stats and different abilities for each player, season and exhibition modes to choose from, classic uniforms, a homerun derby mode, and a "legends" team with all the greats of the game- there's plenty here to keep most people playing for a long time. One of the best baseball games I've played on any platform.

WSB 2K3 Long Live The King!!!!!!!11

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: April 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First I was a little scared to purchase this title since I had purchased WSB 2K1 and soon discovered it was the WORST VIDEO GAME(even a $10)I had ever played!! WOW what a difference 2 years makes 2K3 is miles ahead of 2K1. The game play is very easy once you get all the controls down, the ballparks are awesome every detail right down to the pool at the BOB,the Coke bottle at the TED,the train & the hill at Minute Maid. Was so impressed with this title suggested it to my sister to purchase for her PS2. The only flaw is that there several players with the same faces. But other than that this game hits a Grand Slam. Would highly suggest to any one looking for a baseball game.

Great Baseball Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Many of the positives have already been said by other reviewers. The franchise mode is where the magic happens in this game with realistic manager/owner decisions having to be made. I'm currently 3/4 through my second season and as a die hard baseball fan, here are the areas that can be improved:

1)You can't play pitchers in the field or pinch hit with pitchers. Sure... you might not ever want to, but you should at least have the option.

2)If you bring in a pinch hitter for a pitcher, you cannot change his position once your team takes the field. Meaning, if you want to leave the pinch hitter in as your new leftfielder, you're outta luck. Major frustration.

3)Saving between innings is nice, but when you have pitcher warmed up in the bullpen after you bring in a pinch hitter and then do the save, the next time you start back up, you no longer have a warmed up pitcher and you have a fielder on the mound.

4)Injuries are funny. Sometimes they will show a player from the other team laying down at home plate writhing around like he's in pain, then a message will come up saying that YOUR right fielder has a broken eye socket and will miss 75 days.

5)Sometimes when I'm reading a bio on a certain player, the game will auto-reset.

6)You can't read player bio's or abilities during games.

7)Outfielders throws are way too accurate. 9 times out of 10 I get thrown out at the plate by a bullet throw from the warning track in left field that is right on the money.

8)Even if auto-dl handling is turned off, the AI will still decide for you who gets promoted/demoted when players come off the dl making a mess of your line up.

9)Every once in awhile, the ai will decide that your pitcher's roles all need to be changed.

There are a few other small issues, but overall, this is one heck of a realistic game. After awhile, like most sports games, you will mute the sound (after about the 200th "...and he hits a frozen rope to centerfield!"). The game play has enough challenge to keep things interesting and there are plenty of options to change the difficulty.

Half arcade, half sim

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: February 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

2003 was a great year for baseball titles. There were at least four solid games to choose from. How fans decided what to choose came down to what aspects of baseball they enjoyed the most. High Heat placed strong emphasis on pitcher-batter interface and gameplay options. All-Star Baseball loaded its game with fun extras and ultra realism of its player models and live stadiums. MVP Baseball (which I haven't yet played) drew critical acclaim for its inventive pitching model. The one game that seemed to receive almost unanimous praise was World Series Baseball 2K3. This game, I would say, placed its emphasis on the action part of baseball. That is, the fielding.

Ah, fielding! Forgive this review when he says, I HATE FIELDING in video games. In real life, I love running down a hard hit gapper. But in a video game, there are simply too many things to keep track of. It feels like you have to play all nine positions at all times. WSB tries to ease to my pain by creating one of the smoothest fielding games ever! The mechanics of the player models are seamless. Charging a slow roller in the infield and throwing to first base is a beautiful thing to watch (especially when the player models are so gorgeously rendered). The look, feel and ease of fielding in WSB truly is an accomplishment. Despite that, I'm still not a fielding convert. Unfortunately WSB doesn't include an auto-fielding option, which should be a requirement in every game. For that it loses a star.

Another weakness is its boring batter/pitcher sim. The pitches seem 2D to me. Sliders move okay but the curveballs don't drop like they do in HH and ASB. Fastballs are straight. No 2-seamers or 4-seamers like in HH and ASB. Pitch selection in general is very weak. Batting is a mixed bag. Not a fan of the cursor but luckily there's a Timed Hitting option where you don't have to aim that darn target. Strikeouts aren't common but if you have the pitch-speed slider set to medium or faster (which a great option every game should have) you will miss a few. Walks aren't frequent either but not impossible with patience and a good eye. The ball-to-bat physics is realistic. Late swings will almost always mean opposite field contact and pulling the ball is not hard unlike most other games (take note ASB). The swinging motion has an awkward feel. The hitters swing as though they're trying to pull every ball for a homerun. The stances are an uninspired with not much variation. Since I put a premium on batter/pitcher sim, small details like this degrade my experience.

WSB includes the standard extras. Most notable for me are the franchise mode and homerun tournament. Both are well-executed but nothing special considering ASB and HH go the extra mile with their features.

WSB hits a homerun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is by far the best baseball game for any console. It is most realistic and is most in depth. The graphics are excellent and most players look like themselves. The gameplay is great yet it lacks xbox live capability. there are all the stats that are in real MLB and throught hte year you can watch the # of all star votes so thats neat too. Everything in this game was done with quality and it truly deserves 5 stars.

Beware of the season-killing bug in this game!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There's much to be said about the good things in this game, the beautiful graphics, the variable AI sliders (High Heat anyone?), and the franchise mode, but here's my problem, and I've verified with other gamers that I'm not alone here. This game has a killer bug in franchise mode that can make your entire franchise worthless. I was headed into September and on the verge of making a great run for the postseason when I suddenly encountered a bug that caused the game to freeze up everytime I tried to play past a certain date. When this happens, there's no way of salvaging the season as the file has become corrupted. You have to start a brand new season over again. Talk about a turning someone off to a game. I promptly sold the game away because of this. The frustrating thing is that it doesn't necessarily happen to everyone, but it's happened to several people I've talked to in various forums. So while this game is still fun on several fronts, it's still a risk if you choose to invest in a season.

I think this game is comparable to ASB2K4, except for that darned bug!

Best XBox Baseball

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The options and gameplay of this game are top of the line. I've played MVP, High Heat, and Inside Pitch, and WSB is a step above them all. The best part is: Even after you get used to the game and become an "expert," the AI can get hot at any time in any game and beat you.

All in all, I have not played a better Baseball video game.

A GREAT game, but probably should be 4.5 stars...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

World Series Baseball 2k3 is really a great baseball videogame. It is far from perfect, but the overall package is quite good. The game builds on the base and engine of last year's title, and is for the most part a very similar game, but it makes a couple of absolutely crucial improvements.

The first of these improvements is a large selection of gameplay sliders you can tune to your preference. There should hopefully be even more customization avaialable in next year's title, but you can still adjust things independently of each other like CPU pitching skill, how often the CPU pitcher will throw strikes (vs. balls), CPU batting eye, the CPU batting average, and how often the CPU will try and steal. Of course you can still adjust things like your batting cursor size (or you can opt to not use one), pitch speed, and a host of other in-game options. It may take you some time to find the optimal settings for your skill level, but you will eventually be able to turn out very realistic box scores and season stats across the board with the one exception being stolen bases. It is ridiculously easy to steal a base in this game, so you basically need to use the honor system or you will shatter all kinds of records. Otherwise though, after some work, you can play a really good baseball game where walks and pitcher inaccuracies are big factors and you won't get twenty hits or hit ten home runs every game. It is unfortunate that the game requires so much tuning, but the end result is what counts and it is fantastic. Fielding is much better in this year's version as well. Double plays are much easier to turn and the players generally feel more responsive. There is a new jump command as well which can allow you to "rob" homeruns if you time everything right. The move is quite tough to pull off, but quite rewarding when it works. On the whole, the outfield plays pretty well but it does take a while to learn how to take the right angle on a ball and until you figure it out, it can be really frustrating. The second main improvement is much better stat tracking. In last year's game, you lost all record of a season's stats once the season was over. Now you can keep full career records and even get your players into the Hall of Fame.

There are, however, still a few things that really need to be fixed. First, the game has some buggy audio. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is annoying when the announcers make serious mistakes or break-up in mid-sentance. Also, the announcers really need to learn how to say the names of created players if another player in the game has the same last name. And speaking of the announcers, where the heck are Jon Miller and Joe Morgan? If we are forced to put with the special ESPN interface (which really just feels like a commercial to me), then we should at least get the very best ESPN broadcasters. There are a few more stats which should be tracked. For example, pitches per plate appearance (for hitters) and average pitches per inning (for pitchers) should be tracked. It would be neat to have access to the real MLB managers to use as coaches, and it would be neat to see the effects of different organizational philosophies and the quality of the coaching a little more clearly in both user and CPU controlled teams. Also, it would be really nice if the minor league system were fleshed out a little more. You should be allowed to keep more players in the system and you should be able to look at minor league stats as well. It would be really great if you even had A, AA, and AAA teams you needed to fill the rosters out for. Expanding the minor leagues would require the draft being expanded beyond seven rounds, but that would be a bonus in every sense anyways. Finally, the game should be compatible with XBox Live. At the very least, you should be able to download roster updates.

These complaints, however, don't keep WSB 2k3 from being a great game. If you enjoyed last year's version as well and are wondering whether it is worth picking up this year's, I'd say yes owing to the really well executed customizable sliders.

Bugs and Baseball Do Not Mix

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: June 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Do not buy this game! Repeat--don't waste your money!

While it's fairly detailed and pretty graphically--it has gamekilling bugs and outrageously bad interface issues.

First off, the fielding is an absolute mess! A ball hit to the outfield often reveals just a screen of grass and the ball with only an arrow pointing off screen to what is supposedly your pre-selected player. That should be the fielder closest to the ball. Theoretically. Unfortunateley, none of that may be true. After what seems to be an interminable wait, your selected guy may appear, but often, a non-selected fielder may jump in and grab the ball from the opposite side anyway before you even get there! Huh?

A foul-pop was snatched by the unselected pitcher even though I ran my selected catcher over directly under it with plenty of time. Huh? Bugs, bugs, and more bugs.

There is lierally no logic or reason to the incredibly slow fielder retrieval process. You'll find yourself time after time with your man crawling after balls deep in the field. They can get only balls hit right to them, and then the above-mentioned insane selection bug/process makes things confusing and frustrating.

Add to that numerous fielding bugs (fielders running in the opposite direction and jumping against the wall when you direct them towards a routine single pickup/Announcers calling the wrong score/etc) and this game devolves into a complete joke of a product.

I don't mind a few graphic glitches if they don't affect outcomes--but this game's serious bugs and crazy fielder selection/playmaking schemes rendered my game vs. my friend nothing but a frustrating, infuriating disaster. And we've played a lot of baseball games, and design games for a living.

Strongly recommend against this game--Sega should be ashamed of itself for shipping a half-completed non-debugged poorly executed product.

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