Monday, August 29, 2005
For all practical purposes sports games can be broken down into two categories: simulation and arcade. Simulations feature professional licenses, a steep learning curve for newcomers, and realistic physics and character models. Arcade sports games are much easier to learn, feature exaggerated character models, and have physics more akin to an episode of Looney Tunes than real life.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Mario Superstar Baseball for the Nintendo Gamecube falls into the latter category. Like previous installments in the Mario sports series, Superstar Baseball shuns the minute details and simulation aspects found in games by EA and Sega in favor of a more accessible gaming experience in hopes of appealing to the more casual (sports) gamer.
Developer Namco accomplishes this by simplifying the control scheme to a level which an adept kindergartener would be comfortable using. The A button is the star of the show here, throwing, batting, jumping, and pitching. You can literally play this game with one hand and be okay, for the most part. B has two commands (bunting and sprinting) while X and Y handle manual base running and steals. Holding the R button during pitching or batting performs your character's star move, the Mushroom Kingdom's equivalent of a performance enhancer.
In an effort to keep the control scheme on the right side of the line between easily accessible and redundantly simple timing is a major factor on both sides of the ball. Hit a pitch with a precisely timed charged swing and it's going, going, gone. Swing too early or late and it's an easy out for the opposition. Release A at the appropriate time during a wind up and you'll throw the heat. When fielding, charge your throw and you may get the ball to it's designated base in time to get a clinching out.
The roster features a myriad of characters from the Mario games. Some are more obscure, like say, the Delphinos from Mario Sunshine. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as unique star moves for both offense and defense.
This adds some variety, but once you've played a few games it becomes obvious which characters belong on the field and which ones need to hit the showers. Permanently. This diminishes the need to experiment or use different characters in combination with one another, making who takes the field more of a personal choice than a form of strategy. This emphasizes the importance of recruiting players for your team in Challenge, Superstar Baseball's version of story mode.
In Challenge Mode you select a team captain at the outset. Your team is then made up of your captain, the two or three exclusive characters to that ball club. The remainder of your roster consists of subordinates that all play and control the same. Your team then travels around the Mushroom Kingdom challenging different teams in hopes of stealing away their Superstar players (hence the game's title). This is accomplished by completing character-specific goals within a game and, on top of that, winning.
Players on your team can also gain stat points by accomplishing their own Star Goals. This is a nice touch too, although not being able to manually apply the points you've earned makes precise customization almost impossible.
Challenge Mode is accompanied by Exhibition (the game's quick match mode), Toy Game, in which players compete for coins, Practice, and Minigame. Exhibition works well. All characters, save the secret ones, are unlocked and you're allowed to choose any combination of players and take on the computer or a friend. Toy Mode is an interesting concept, in which you and any combination of three human or computer players compete for coins by hitting specific areas on the field. This mode feels very half-baked. There's really no strategy involved aside from trying to hit the ball to specific points on the field. There's little more to it than that.
Minigame consists of over four minigames that each emphasize a different fundamental of the game. Within each game there four difficulty settings, which must be completed in sequence in order to unlock the next difficulty. They range from fun, (Bob-omb Derby and Wall Ball) to annoying (Chain Chomp Sprint). Ultimately Minigame fulfills its purpose: it provides a fun distraction from the main game and lengthens the amount of playtime by a couple of hours.
So what's wrong with Mario Superstar Baseball? Well for one, it's too simple for it's own good. I mentioned earlier the need for timing, well once you've gotten the timing down for batting and pitching, you're pretty much set. This can be said for any baseball game, but in most cases it takes longer than a couple of hours to achieve this. Not so in Superstar's case.
That with the fact that Challenge mode takes about two hours to run through on Mushroom (the default setting) and offers nothing more than an increase in difficulty. You don't play against new teams, just harder ones. The opportunity to unlock some secret characters on the harder settings isn't enough to keep Challenge from quickly becoming an exercise in repetition.
It's not that Mario Superstar Baseball is a bad game. It's fun:for awhile, but gripes like these as well as a frustrating camera system (which is too close during fly balls to the outfield) and an annoying autoselect feature for fielding keep this arcade sports game from reaching the same level of fun as a game like the Hot Shots Golf series or even Mario Tennis.
If you're a sport fan that's burnt out on the excessive realism of games like Madden or MLB, a first time player of sports videogames looking to get your feet wet, or a Mario fanboy that's dying to settle the age old debate "can Mario hit Luigi's slider" then check this out. For all others: stick with the real thing, you'll play it longer.
Graphics: B
Sound: B
First Play: B-
Last Play: C
Gameplay: C
Overall: 75% C
