Glen’s impressions of PYS4
First off, my only experience with Japanese League baseball is via the movie ‘Mr. Baseball’ starring Tom Selleck. So, when I sat down with the game tonight, I was a complete virgin to the Japanese game. Not that it’s Blurn Ball or anything, but it’s got it’s differences.
Graphically the game is incredibly impressive. The animations are very, very smooth and the player models are incredibly detailed. It’s also cool to see players not trying to break up a double play (Something that is apparently frowned upon in Japanese Baseball.) Also, I’ve seen a passed ball and an error for the Short Stop when they air mailed a throw over the first baseman.
The ball physics that I’ve seen thus far are very good and there have been a few times already where I’m getting into the game and I’m twisting my shoulders to try and keep the ball in play. That, to me, means that the ball is acting like it should.
Hitting in the game is quite challenging, but not in a “this is cheap” kind of way. You’re not going to get a hit unless you get really solid wood on the ball, and I’ve gotten no where near hitting a homer yet. A very good sign.
Dan and I had a chance to chat, on our PS3’s tonight, after we both played in solo mode and we both agreed that the thing the game is very, very good but could be excellent if we had more knowledge of the Japanese language. Right now we both have to skip through a great deal of the text in the game just because we have no idea how to do most things.
If you haven’t had a chance to look at it, this is the tutorial that I’m following. It’s a very early FAQ, but it does a great job at covering some of the things that you can do in the game. The tough part about it is the fact that it only covers about 25% of the things that you can do in the game. For example, they don’t have anything about the MVP (Think MLB’s - The Show) or Pennant Chase (A 5 year franchise) modes. It’s great that the game has that much depth, but it’s going to make it really hard for us to enjoy it as we don’t know what in the hell we’re being told by the game most of the time.
From my one night experience with the game, I’m definitely going to be playing a lot more of it. Also, to let you know how much I enjoyed the game, I’m thinking about acquiring a Japanese dictionary so that I can try and learn some of the words in the game so I can enjoy the game a bit more. It’s fun to have the epiphany when you figure out that the word on the screen means first base, but there is a ton of trial and error in gameplay to get there and it’s holding me back from enjoying the game as much as I could right now.
Oh, and just for comparison with the MLB2K7 demo… this game blows that game out of the water. I could live in the Exhibition game mode alone and enjoy myself a great deal more than I did when I was playing the 2K7 demo.
I think it’s safe to say that my PS3 isn’t just going to be a machine dedicated to Folding@Home anymore.