Customer Reviews

High Heat Major League Baseball 2004

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

High Heat 2004 did some nice additions to this year's version. I purchased the version for the PS2. The biggest change is the franchise version, which allows you to play multiple seasons, sign free agents, manage your team as well as its budget, and have an A-AAA team, where you can promote and demote players.

The graphics are pretty good on the game, but I wish the players were more scaled to the actual bodies. The gameplay seems to be a little bit more cleaner than last year's version.

I would recommend this game to all of the baseball fans out there. Obviously, I haven't seen All-Star Baseball or MVP (Triple Play, whatever), but I can't imagine them being a better overall game than High Heat 2004. From what I have seen MVP may be just as good, but the franchise mode on this game is beyond what I have ever seen on a baseball game before.

I don't think you will be disappointed with your purchase if you decide to go with High Heat 2004.

So I figure I'll go out and buy HH 2004 being that I loved 2003 so much. I have only played a few games but I can tell already that this game will be the best on the market for a second straight year.

The graphics on the stadiums are incredible, every detail is rendered nearly to perfection. The grass looks beaautiful, I wanted to go out and buy baseball tickets seeing this.

The gameplay starts off as being too easy on offense....change your skill level and it will help, though usually you'll just get pounded by the cpu. In that case you go to the gameplay sliders, as every aspect of the game is customizeable to varying degrees. For instance, by tuning the offense down a bit I was able to play a game using St Louis against Arizona with a 1-1 tie going into the eigth, 7 combined hits.

Thats the kind of game you get when two aces oppose each other. Even 2003 was too easy on the offense, and those sliders helped make a fun season incredibly realistic.

The crowd was supposed to have been overhauled, but I still didnt hear much of a difference. They started to get excited as the game went into extra innings and the home team was threatening, but not cheering uncontrollably like would happen in a MLB park. Maybe I'll pay a bit more attention to it, as I did only play shortly.

Im guessing that EA and All Star Baseball will trail behind 3D0 once again. This is the game for the baseball purist, this is not Triple Play "arcade" baseball.

If I had to detract from the game at all, I would say that the menus are a bit tedious to navigate, and looking at "league leaders" only seems to give you the top 8 in the league, unless Im looking at something incorrectly. I'll have to play with it more.

If you want realisim it's here. There is not "put the ball where you want to pitch it" and no batting cursor. You move the analog stick where you see the ball the better you get at identifing pitches the better you hit. The graphics are Good.. much better than HH2003, but still a bit lacking. The commantary is nil, and the stats are fantastic, but there are no real frills here, just like reading the paper, even most of the menus don't have any music (this could be a plus or minus depending on your wants.) You can tell they released this game a bit early from some of the gliches..(i.e. the commentator will said he's out on a called strike when you swing etc..) All and all this is probably the best baseball game out there, unless you are looking to play "arcade like (Triple Play style) hitting home runs 20 times in a game. HH2004 is not perfect but it is the best.

This year's version has much better graphics than HH 2003 as well as more realistic fielding. The tuning menus allow you to change even more options such as how fast the fielders move, how hard the cathers throw, all the way to how difficult or easy it is for you to make contact. The basic gameplay is the same which is great because HH 2003 was already an ausome game. But this year, the fielding is cooler, for example....if you're running towards the line with your right fielder to chase a base hit, he has to spin around and make the throw, which allows you to take extra bases with fast runners. The fielding is very realistic and pitchers don't tire as quickly as last year. But you can also tune pitchers to last longer if you wanted to anyway. The producers kept all the great things about HH 2003 and added much more behind the scenes stuff like full minor league rosters and disabled lists. This game is super and 3DO has really out done themselves. My only complaint would be after one game ended, befor the stats could come up the game froze...but it hasn';t happened since so big deal.

A few years ago I read Tim McCarver's book Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans. McCarver having been a catcher, that book contains a treasure trove of knowledge concerning what goes on in the showdown between the batter vs. the pitcher and catcher at every single pitch (and that showdown accounts for 90% of the action in any given baseball game). I have never watched a baseball game the same way since then; thanks to McCarver I understand the game and love watching it more than I ever have.

This is the only baseball video game on the market, to my knowledge, that accurately simulates that showdown. It simulates all the pitches that the real-life pitchers actually throw, so that you have to understand how the pitches move and how to choose sequences of pitches to keep the hitters guessing if you want to win. And unlike so many of even the good sports simulation games out there, as you play this one you'll find that the stats you accumulate will be a very close approximation of the numbers real-life pro ballplayers produce: batting averages, homeruns per season, pitcher ERA's, etc. Furthermore, even as the game's default settings are the most accurate video game simulation of baseball there is, the settings for every aspect of the game are also fully adjustable so that you can fully tailor the game exactly to your liking.

As noted in the other reviews here, the game has some definite weaknesses in other departments. But the pitching/hitting simulation is so fantastic that for me it more than makes up for any other shortcomings in the game.

This was the last version of this game released! As I write this review in '06, none of the current baseball games available are anywhere near as good as this one. Buy a used copy and take good care of it, you'll love it!

I had to buy this game without knowing much about it, so I want others to know what I didn't.

The graphics are definitely better than HH 2003, which wasn't bad anyway. Much more realistic graphics, a plus.

The game play is slightly different. The fielders hop around more before throwing--it's more realistic, but harder to get used to. Just like HH 2003, it isn't that difficult to hit the ball (a big advantage over the All Star Baseball games), and there's still a handy tuning menu where you can adjust the game play to make it easier or harder for you. Game play gets thumbs up.

Audio: the case says "new announcer commentary"--well if that's true, I have yet to hear it. The same annoying phrases I got tired of in the old game are still here, and I haven't heard a single new one--and I played the old one enough to know all the announcers' lines. I think I'll listen to music while playing the game. Thumbs down on the audio "changes."

When I finished playing my first game, something happened that never happened to me before--it froze my PS2, so I couldn't save the game. That's a problem, but I haven't tried it again yet to see if that's going to keep happening, so I'll assume it was a one-time thing.

The case also promises "full Minor Leagues systems." All-Star 2003 had real minor league players, but only a handful per team, and the game play was next to impossible so I never really touched it after picking up HH 2003. So I bought this game--and found that it doesn't use real minor leaguers. I was pretty disappointed, so I actually changed most of my own team's minor league system to reflect the real thing--a big hassle, but I figure I'll enjoy the career mode much more like that. If you don't care, then you'll be fine with it as it is. I like realism.

The computer seems to be better at the game than in HH 2003. I had Tom Glavine on the mound, and he gave up 13 runs in 6 innings--with 2 homers by Chris Stynes. Come on, people, this is Tom Glavine. At least I had 15 runs in those 6 innings. I had to cheat with the tuning menu to win a game where I scored 15 legitimate runs. That's a little annoying, and knocks the game's rating down by a star for me. Still, it has good, realistic graphics, and it's a really fun game to play, which is probably what really counts.

This game is hard when it's on Hall of Fame level, which is what it suppose to be. With some games you put it on hard and the game is so easy to play. The only reason this game is not a five star is because the graphics are not that good. Another thing is for some reason I don't hit many homers. I played with the A's for about 25 games and have 16 homers as a team. Actually that ain't that bad and sounds fairly realistic. I woulds definitely buy this game if you like a challenge and are into realistic gameplan. You'll have 3-1, 7-0 , 10-5, games which make the game playable for the long run cause not every game is the same.

The game is great!
I went to see if all the players u can tell apart, and my results were that the ONLY thing the same on each player was the cleets. thats it. But it is truly the litlest thing that nobody cares about. The graphics are OK, not an eysore, it is actually preaty nice. Now that I think of it, I see that the base coaches actualy make emotions. The umpires. Well they aren't PERFECT and I think that is on purpose that they dont make ALL of the call PERFECT because SOMETIMES, only some times a runner, batter, or fielder might think the umpire made a bad call and might end up in ejections! There are also injuries. some of the injuries are stupid such as Blister. The fielders also make errors, that is also only SOMETIMES. As I know you guys might not, This game's first edition was called "high heat major league 2000" it was a computer game and it used to have some weird crowds who said kiddy phrases such as "Drop it! Drop it!" before sombody caught it, stuff like that, that was annoying. I am happy they got RID of that. The game also has minor league teams. you can't paly with them, they are just there to call up. When you want to call a player up you click square on the player, and it will show the scoting report. If i didn't have it (i do) i would want to buy it because I think it is a really Great game as a discribed.

The game is great!
I went to see if all the players u can tell apart, and my results were that the ONLY thing the same on each player was the cleets. thats it. But it is truly the litlest thing that nobody cares about. The graphics are OK, not an eysore, it is actually preaty nice. Now that I think of it, I see that the base coaches actualy make emotions. The umpires. Well they aren't PERFECT and I think that is on purpose that they dont make ALL of the call PERFECT because SOMETIMES, only some times a runner, batter, or fielder might think the umpire made a bad call and might end up in ejections! There are also injuries. some of the injuries are stupid such as Blister. The fielders also make errors, that is also only SOMETIMES. As I know you guys might not, This game's first edition was called "high heat major league 2000" it was a computer game and it used to have some weird crowds who said kiddy phrases such as "Drop it! Drop it!" before sombody caught it, stuff like that, that was annoying. I am happy they got RID of that. The game also has minor league teams. you can't paly with them, they are just there to call up. When you want to call a player up you click square on the player, and it will show the scoting report. If i didn't have it (i do) i would want to buy it because I think it is a really Great game as a discribed.

The game is great!
I went to see if all the players u can tell apart, and my results were that the ONLY thing the same on each player was the cleets. thats it. But it is truly the litlest thing that nobody cares about. The graphics are OK, not an eysore, it is actually preaty nice. Now that I think of it, I see that the base coaches actualy make emotions. The umpires. Well they aren't PERFECT and I think that is on purpose that they dont make ALL of the call PERFECT because SOMETIMES, only some times a runner, batter, or fielder might think the umpire made a bad call and might end up in ejections! There are also injuries. some of the injuries are stupid such as Blister. The fielders also make errors, that is also only SOMETIMES. As I know you guys might not, This game's first edition was called "high heat major league 2000" it was a computer game and it used to have some weird crowds who said kiddy phrases such as "Drop it! Drop it!" before sombody caught it, stuff like that, that was annoying. I am happy they got RID of that. The game also has minor league teams. you can't paly with them, they are just there to call up. When you want to call a player up you click square on the player, and it will show the scoting report. If i didn't have it (i do) i would want to buy it because I think it is a really Great game as a discribed.