Triple Play 2001 Review
Triple Play Baseball is the flagship EA game now coming to life on the PS2. With enhanced graphics, realistic game play, and all your favorite major leaguers, Triple Play is a solid baseball game.
Besides everything else, and considering all the hype, Triple Play also enters the field with very little competition. Besides All Star Baseball 2001, this is all you’re getting for baseball this season.
Stump of Approval
The graphics look gorgeous, with beautifully rendered ballparks, realistic movement on all of the character models, and excellent camera movement on all of the plays. The only exceptionally diverse graphical complaint is the stumpy player models. Although EA tried to recreate each player authentically, the models look squashed and short — even though there are few NBA-sized players in baseball, all of the player look like they went through the dryer twice. There’s also that glassy-eyed Madden 2001 look to the players. At times it feel like you’re playing with zombies.
The sounds are about as good as you’d expect from EA’s team of audio specialists. The commentary is usually right on the money, but certain phrases come up two or three times during an inning. There are also some slightly vague rambling about a player who needs to bring his team out of a slump — even if the team is leading by three or more runs. Another audio oddity is the crowd themselves. Great ambient noise, including paging the arena for specific people, shouts for hot dogs and peanuts, and player taunting — but during the first inning when a player hit a grand slam, the level of the noise from the crowd never increased, no cheers, no yells — and the team that scored was the home team.
Swing Batter
The batting and pitching controls have a learning curve to them, but they’re not too extreme. Pitching strength is determined by pressure-sensitive buttons (after picking a particular pitch from a menu), but the lighter the pressure, the more control you have after the ball is released. In other words, go lightly and you can move the ball around. Shove it down the pipe and it’s up to the batter to connect. The batting controls are cursor-based — you aim the cursor where you think the ball is going and you time the swing to connect. The problem with both these controls is the lack of control — you can rock almost any pitcher based solely on where the cursor is. Stealing and pick-offs are done with the directional button, and fielding is also cursor based. Fielding is sometimes annoying because you never know which player is going to get to the ball first, and switching players is confusing.
Triple Play 2001 is not the fantasy slugger that last year’s game was, with ballparks set in living rooms and castles, but it’s a solid baseball game that will attract a number of fans looking for something more traditional. It’s a good addition to your sports library, and a well-constructed game with great graphics and malleable controls. Triple Play makes it’s mark again on a PlayStation, and it’s 2 good 2 be true.
