A very awkward baseball game that is of very little enjoyment
Written: Sep 26 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Music
Cons: Everything Else
The Bottom Line: Stay away from Bases Loaded IV. You may never read this review, and you may never get a Nintendo, but you'll thank me, son.
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| C_A's Full Review: Bases Loaded 4 for Nintendo |
Bases Loaded IV was released in 1993, a time when the Nintendo Entertainment System was almost dead, and this game may have very well killed it. When this game came out, there were already 50 or more games better than this out on other systems. Why did Jaleco even bother with making this game? Were they in it for the money, or were they trying to keep the NES alive? I am going with the first one. This game has its highs in some areas, but at the most important points of a baseball game it fails miserably.
Graphics (5.0)
Arr, the graphics just didn’t do it for me, especially for a game from 1993. I highly doubt this game wanted to push the NES to its limits, but if it did, I pity Jaleco. For once, not even the baseball players look well designed. They look all disgruntled and such. The “pitcher-batter” view also has the umpire looking like a black glob with two tan dots that I guess should resemble eyeballs.
I would have to say that overall the graphics are completely average. Not better, not worse.
Sound/Music (7.5)
OK, I can’t honestly say that this game is 100% god-awful. This is undoubtedly the high point of the game. The sounds were not all that great. You know, the usual calls. “Strike” “Ball” “Out” “Safe” And, of course, the very much clichéd sound that the ball makes when it’s being thrown or hit into the air.
The sound isn’t what made the score so high now. It was the music. The music in this game is very, very catchy. It is upbeat, fun, and downright memorable. There are about 6 or 7 themes during the game, and all of them utterly rule. The only problem I have with the music is the opening theme, which sounds very, very annoying.
Overall, I thought the sound was average, but the music added to the atmosphere a lot and made this game better than what it would have been if it had worse music.
Control (2.0)
Ouch. Pain…paiiiiiin. Almost every last aspect of the control is wrong, wrong and even more wrong. The pitching is the only thing that actually brought the control up from a zero. That is, when you’re the one pitching. When the defense is pitching, 99% of the time you have no clue where that ball is going to be, and even when it goes down the middle you will still miss the ball occasionally.
The fielding is not that much better, either. When the ball is hit into the outfield, you have absolutely no damned clue where or when the ball will land, thus throwing you into confusion or rage when the ball drops 100 feet ahead of where you thought it would land, or 100 feet into the stands. Also, throwing the ball to the right place does take a while to get used to, for they have reversed the field view in this game. Now it looks like as it is on television. Is this a good thing? Not really. The hundreds baseball games that came before this were mostly the exact opposite, and most of us had gotten used to it. Of course, some people may catch on to this and adapt quickly, but after many hours of playing, I still occasionally screwed up bad when throwing. Occasionally = 90% of the time.
Now, once you actually throw the ball right, I sometimes question why the ball gets thrown so crappily at times. In the outfield, they chunk the ball really damned fast most of the time, but if you’re 4 feet away from the base you need to throw it to, the ball goes so damned slow, which sometimes results in the opposing player getting a free base or you giving up a run. That happened to me so many times that I lost count at about twenty.
So, altogether the control factor is hands down what made this game the festering pile of crap that it truly is. If only they could have made this more accurate I would have liked the rest of the game.
Gameplay (2.0)
Well, Jaleco didn’t put any innovations into this at all. It is just a regular baseball game the way I look at it. You have two modes, Exhibition and Regular Season. The only difference between the two is that you play more than one game in Regular Season. No, no fancy stats or crap like that.
The options aren’t all that great either. There are only two. That’s right. Two. There were tons of games before this that had tons and tons of options (well, actually 6 or more, but hey) but this game has only two. Do you want music? Yes or no. Do you want a designated hitter? Yes or no. Cripes, could they at least had a difficulty setting? I do not like having 2 home runs hit off me every inning when all I can do is barely muster out ground balls with my offense.
Ahh, home runs. This is yet another annoying factor of this game. There are too many damned home runs in this game, and to make matters worse, 99% of them are from the other team. Here’s a small example of my commentary during this game. Yes, I do this when I am bored.
“Well, the ball is popped up to C_A’s defense. It looks like a small routine fly ball to me. Wait a minute, wait a minute! It’s going faster! It’s back, back, back, gone! …What the hell just happened!?”
For the computer’s team, if it hits a routine 100 ft ball, it is automatically gone most of the time. As for the balls that aren’t a home run, it still takes something just short of a miracle to actually catch the ball most of the time. “It’s going to land here! No, here! Here! Ahhhh to hell with it.” Needless to say it is a very rare occurrence when I actually win this damned game. I usually lose 10+ to nothing.
I can’t say control is what utterly killed the gameplay, but it did do about 80% of the job. The other 20% was the lack of options and stats. This game should’ve been released in the 80’s…not 1993.
Replay (0.0)
No way. You can’t be serious! I had to play this game more than a few hours, so why should you have to endure the pain and suffering I had to go through!? I don’t want to put that sort of burden on you…unless you’re one of those few (5 billion+) people that I hate.
Overall (2.5)
Let’s see. I have played Bases Loaded, which was a damn good game for its day. Then, I briefly remember playing Bases Loaded II about 6 or 7 years ago. Bases Loaded III… never played it. That may have been where the series went wrong, but I may never know. All I can say is that Bases Loaded IV is the worst I have played of the series. Save your four or ten dollars (two prices I glanced at for the game on ebay) and go get yourself some other twenty-cent sports games. They’re much, much better. Not to make fun of the 20-cent games, though. NHL ’94 is the best damned 20-cent game ever. Bah, Bases Loaded IV should be considered a negative-two-cent game, though. Oh well, I guess this cart did sale a few thousand to die-hard, fickle Jaleco fans.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
C_A
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Member: Celestial Avenger
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 9 members
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