young_one's Full Review: MVP 06 NCAA Baseball for Xbox
MVP 06 NCAA Baseball is like no other baseball game before it. It's a college baseball game. After the Major League Baseball license was gobbled up by Take-Two, EA couldn't put out another baseball title unless it was a college experience. Well here you have it. The first game of its kind and with EA, I'm sure it's not the last. There's something about the college atmosphere that gets me ebullient.
As you fire the new game up you are treated to a beautifully done intro. The first thing you see is the back of a Tennessee jersey with the name Helton. Todd Helton that is. As the scene later goes on you see other Major Leaguers of present. Names such as Mark Prior of USC, and Nomar Garciaparra of Georgia Tech. Then as fast as they came on to the screen they leave, replaced by video game images of the players. Now I must say, the players look unbelievable. The graphics in the game do a fine job of giving the game atmosphere. There's nothing like seeing the giant cursive writing that says Miami right behind home plate. It's the details in the game that help it. When you slide in the dirt on a baseball field what happens? Dirt flies and you get dirty. What happens in this game? A cloud of clay and dirt fly up around your player and when you look at him, his uniform is dirty. Players run smoothly, the batting looks good. People actually look like they're going to be hitting a baseball. A great thing in this game that I really appreciate EA for incorporating are the outfielders motions on fly balls. A runner is on third and a fly ball is hit to right field. The outfielder steps back and gets under the ball waiting for it. It looks funny because he's behind the marker of where the ball will be but as it drops in his glove you see what he's doing. He uses the momentum from running to the ball as power for a throw to home plate. It's a great thing that has finally been put into a baseball game. Like I said, it's the little things.
The stadiums are beautifully done. There are 18 real college stadiums and a total of 29 stadiums in the game. You can play from Clemson's field to Cornfield Park, a place where the cornfields sits on the horizon so baseball's can get lost in the many acres of harvest.
As I sit here, I really am starting to appreciate the music of the game. I find myself reiterating the lyrics of some of the songs on the game. The soundtrack mostly consists of rock which is a possible reason of why I enjoy it. They throw in just about every type of song on the soundtrack though so it's not too repetitive. After they cycle though the same song 5 times it gets kind of annoying but it is easily fixed by gaming it up and hearing the announcers. That's not to say that the announcers can't get repetitive also. After hearing "that's a scorching line drive" every hit, I begin to want to shut them up. They provide good commentary through most of the game though and are quite entertaining at times. If you get tired of them, just turn them off and listen to the beautiful pinging noise ring in the distance.
The hitting is something that is new to the virtual baseball scene. As the pitch comes you are to pull back on the right joystick to "load up" and get your batter ready to hit a shot. Then if you think it's the right time to hit the pitch, you push forward quickly on the same right joystick to follow through on your swing. It makes for an authentic feel and can give people all around a better feeling for how it is to really swing at a baseball. The system gives a kind of do-or-die situation. Load up too early and all your power is gone but if you load up too late then you won't get the bat around quick enough. Timing is the key to becoming a great hitter. Also with this new system is the ability to better check your swing. If you find you are pushing forward and trying to swing at a bad pitch you can easily pull back again and the batter holds his swing. Depending on how far you were on the follow through will tell you if you checked it all the way or not. It gives the game it's own Tiger Woods hitting system so to speak.
They also overhauled the throwing. This can be a good and bad thing. It's a new fun way to throw it around the horn where you push the right joystick towards the base you want to throw. Push right for first base, up for second, left for third, and down for home. Now as you hold this down you are to let it go in the green area to make a good throw. Depending on how good the player is will increase or decrease the size of his green meter for throwing. Now let's say you release this throw too soon. Just like with a real throw the ball is going to go where the point of release is which in this case is high. Now if the throw is severely off then it could go over his head. If it's closer then he can probably jump and catch it. The opposite is true for if you release it late. The ball will then be in the dirt. Again if it's a really bad throwing error then there's a possibility that the ball might not be knocked down and go into the outfield somewhere. The system doesn't do a good job of balancing this though so you could have what looks like a terrible throw be catchable and be, in fact, an out. This system also proves to be faulty when you try to dive for a ball that you catch without diving and he still throws it to the base you were intending on diving towards. The flaws could be easily fixed, we just have to see what EA does about it.
Returning from the MVP MLB series is the ability to read pitches out of the pitchers hand. The system is called "hitters eye" and depending on what pitch is thrown a different color will show up as an outline on the ball. For fastballs there is no outline. For curveballs and sliders there will be a red outline. Change-ups and other offspeed pitches such as a knuckleball will be highlighted with green and sinkers and splitters are purple pitches. It's a nifty way to tell whether or not you need to sit back and wait or hack quickly.
There are game modes galore in MVP 06 NCAA Baseball. It's hard to get bored with everything offered.
Exhibition games can be a great way to fine tune your skills in a non-serious atmosphere. You can have a little rivalry match-up. Nothing says rival like a little game of Arizona State getting it on with Arizona. It's also just lovely having two great teams like Miami and Florida hook up.
If you want to be able to take a team from scratch and bring them to the top then you can bet dynasty mode will be there. There's nothing funner then using a team with absolutely no talent and building up their recruits each year to build a new powerhouse that makes Texas whimper in fear. Recruiting is a blast. The tournament atmosphere and the Road to Omaha give this mode a great sense of enjoyment. A new feature in this mode is the ability to accept goals. Let's say your team needs new bats. Ok, Rawlings will let you have the new Plasma bat they made but you have to drive in 6 runs in your June 5th series against Nebraska. That's just an example but you can get new cleats to increase speed, new undershirts for your pitchers stamina, new gloves to help the players make web gems, and as mentioned before, you can unlock new bats. This feature is not to be outdone by the alumni challenges. The alumni will pay for batting cages, bullpens, and other things but you have to help them out. You have to achieve certain goals against rivals. That's right these alumni want revenge on those much hated Tar Heels or Cornhuskers or whoever it may be. They mean business!
There's also a coach mode where you take the place as the coach and make the gametime decisions. If you want a chill game where you don't have to stress if you get a no-hitter thrown against you then this is it.
Home Run Showdown and the Pitching mini-game return from MVP Baseball 06. Both are very fun with another player. It's great fun to kill your best friend in the Home Run Showdown while he trys to hit your joysticks but cannot succeed in his mission of sabotage.
Many create-modes come with our new NCAA Baseball game too. Create-A-Player is self-explanatory but you really have control over what you want to look like. There's many ways to customize your player and to make him look just like you, or some whacked out clown you saw at last years circus. Create-A-Team came as a surprise to me. It was bad. I was hoping on making a team exactly how I wanted it and it wasn't asking much. I figured they would take the Create-A-Team from Madden and put it in this game but as I found out it was completely different. The logos for teams are limited. You can't pick which colors you want and overall there's just not alot of custimization to be done. Strings hold you back from making the zany Baboon Bombers or the Mongolian Monkeys.
New to this game is the Create-A-Ballpark. This is fun because you make the field with the weirdest dimensions ever. The walls can go insanely high in the air and to vast distances away from home plate. You can make the walls different colors and change the styles of them too. That's not it though. If you want turf, you got it. Natural grass your desire? It's there. Many different things help for this mode to be fun.
Online mode is a blast. Games online are 5 innings for a ranked game which is perfect because it keeps it sweet and short but provides you with fun for long enough. If you have any friends with the game and Xbox Live then this is one of the funnest games to play online in awhile. It's hard to explain what makes it so fun but somewhere between using the worst teams you can find to play eachother or using Pepperdine's knuckleballer to irritate your friend, you just lose yourself. Many a night I've spent playing this game. Quickmatch is probably your best bet for a game not against a friend because out of the maybe 24 players on there a day, most of them go into quickmatches. I've never been able to get a quick 4-man tournament up and I've never seen an actual organized tournament on there ever. The only rant I do have about the online mode is the fact that if you start losing right off the bat, you can quit and not be charged with a loss as long as it's still in the first inning when you quit. It makes for a rather disappointing game when that happens.
Overall this game is wonderful for a first try. Hell, it's wonderful for any try. The lush ballparks and smooth animations, the new hitting system and the "hitters eye", also the great game modes all make for an amazing game that can rival even the best baseball games. Enjoy your MLB license Take-Two, I'll take College Baseball for $30 bucks anytime.
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