Triple Play 2000
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
If stepping up to the plate and smashing the ball out of the yard over and over again sounds like your kind of ball game, Triple Play 2000 is paradise for your inner slugger.
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But if real-life baseball matters to you more, this arcade-style hour of power won't be your field of dreams.
EA Sports' top-selling baseball series returns to the diamond with some key improvements over the flawed Triple Play '99. The biggest refinement is the retooled artifical intelligence. Computer-controlled base runners no longer commit outrageously stupid mistakes, and the AI now knows when to take advantage of your errors to collect some extra bases. It's still not perfect, but no longer a constant source of frustration.
The developers also shifted the focus of the gameplay so that it's all about action. Triple Play's never been a sim series, but the 2000 edition clearly lands on the arcade side of the fence. Every inning yields a handful of hits, every game a handful of homers. Notching Ks is rare because of all that swinging, and walks are even more rare. On the highest difficulty setting, things do tighten up a bit, but the game's still more fantasy than reality.
For many gamers, all that action will make for a rousing good time at the ballpark. But others will be disappointed by the lack of realism. All told, the game definitely has more of a console feel. (Indeed, it's virtually identical to its PlayStation counterpart.)
TP2000 sports its usual complete roster of features. Along with standards like the pro teams and players, gamers will find trades, fantasy drafts, player creation, double switches, and much more. On the technical side, the game installs easily and runs well on a P200 with 32MB RAM and a 3D graphics card. (Higher-end machines will see a slight jump in frame rate.)
The multiplayer side's pretty average, though. The game supports modem, serial connection, IPX, and Internet. EA offers a game-matching service, but interested players were pretty sparse.
On the control side, you'll want a joypad all the way. The game does provide keyboard and mouse play, but they're pretty clunky. With the joypad, fielding, baserunning, and batting are all responsive. However, pitching accurately is a little too challenging, as the D-pad's a pretty jittery mechanism for post-delivery fine-tuning.
Visually, Triple Play delivers eye-catching ballparks and player models. It's not as gorgeous as NHL '99, but these players look sharp and move smartly. Cool camera angles cover pick-off plays or zoom in on the facial expressions of batters, pitchers, and fielders. (Some odd glitches do surface. When a player opens his mouth, you can see right through his head to the stadium behind him.)
Commentators Jim Hughson and Buck Martinez return with their customary strong showing. They flub the occasional call, but mostly are right on-the-money. In-game sounds are also strong, but reflect the game's arcade bent as, for example, huge hits are accompanied by whooshing sounds.
All told, Triple Play rebounds nicely from the disastrous '99 version, delivering a fun, fast-paced game with plenty of polish. Everything about the game is executed well--if not amazingly well--and as long as you don't mind its departure from real-life baseball, it's a blast. Hardcore sim players, however, should keep their distance.
