All Star Baseball 2005 (Xbox, PS2, GCN) - Acclaim
The Enigma

All Star Baseball 2005 (ASB) is a tough nut to crack. On the one hand it has by far the most comprehensive franchise mode of any arcade game on the market, even more detailed than MVP's. On the other hand, you have mediocre gameplay that provides moments of greatness combined with bouts of sheer frustration.

All Star Baseball has a lot of fans and a lot of detractors. It's a love it or hate it kind of game.

One thing ASB does better than any other game is that it gives you the sense that you are actually listening to a broadcast, complete with "downtime" banter between the announcers. It might be a frivolous thing to some, but it really does sound like a broadcast. What other game has the color commentator spending literally two minutes between innings talking about Cincinnati chili?

The game itself has some serious issues. First off, once again pitchers have way too much control. It's not as bad as MVP or MLB, but it's not as good as ESPN in this regard. One of the problems is that the umpire calls anything that is near the strike zone a strike. Even if the ball just nicks the zone they'll never give the batter the benefit of the doubt. This makes you want to swing at nearly every pitch.

A bigger issue is the hitting mode. This year you can finally use a zone/timed hitting method rather than the cursor-based model from previous editions, but it's way too easy to use even on the toughest level of difficulty. Zone hitting is a home run fest that becomes boring after a few games. Cursor-based hitting is a better alternative, but it's also pretty tough to use, and it's either a love it or hate it system.

Acclaim has introduced a new camera option dubbed "fielder cam," which allows you to view the play from the view of the active fielder. A neat idea in theory, but in practice is very tough to use, and unless you want to spend a lot of time learning how it works, it's best to sick to the classic fielding option. Even so, the fielding feels semi-automatic and is one of the weaker parts of the game.

The game also has a problem with scale. For example, the outfield is a bit small, and all outfielders all have cannons for arms. This makes advancing from 2nd base to home on a single extremely tough to do even with a fast runner. ASB 2005 is a base-to-base game unless you can hit a double that rattles around in the corner.

Finally, the baserunning A.I. is woefully underdeveloped. Computer runners will repeatedly make ridiculously bad decisions. Sometimes they'll refuse to tag up when they should, or neglect to try to stretch a single into double when it would be a sure two-bagger. These kinds of things really detract from the game.

However, ASB does a lot right despite its problems. It has perhaps the greatest hit variety than any game on the market. You'll see infield hits, bloops, balls that are hit back up the box and off the mound; the engine driving the ball physics is very well done.

In the end, however, the glitches and bugs make it tough to recommend.

Buy All Star Baseball 2005if:

Give ASB a look if you are already a fan of the series or you really like cursor-based hitting.