Just put Power Pros on the easiest settings and it turns into an arcady home run derby.
I do want to play this but I've still got a sealed copy of Mario Superstar Baseball for the cube sitting on my shelf.
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Just put Power Pros on the easiest settings and it turns into an arcady home run derby.
I do want to play this but I've still got a sealed copy of Mario Superstar Baseball for the cube sitting on my shelf.
This is surprisingly good.
NEW SHIT:
BATTING: Namco has adopted a bit of the Power Pros hitting philosophy, implying a dynamic cursor-based system. Like Power Pros, you can swing for contact, or you can swing for power. Naturally, a contact swing has a bigger cursor than a power swing. To swing for contact, you simply flick the Wiimote forward. To begin a power swing, you first pull back on the wiimote, which will trigger the cursor to gradually shrink before expanding again as the batter charges up, then flick forward to complete the swing. The smaller the cursor is when you swing, the farther the ball will potentially travel. Hitting it dead-center while the cursor as at its absolute smallest is a homerun, but with all of the crazy shit you can do with pitching, it's a lot harder to go yard than it was in Mario Baseball.
Another Power Pros-inspired quirk: the size of the cursor varies from character to character. I think the speed at which the power swing cursor collapses/expands is player-specific as well.
PITCHING: The flick for normal, pull back+flick for charge approach to batting applies here, too. Unlike the GC game, you can pitch from of any point of your charge animation to throw off a hitter's timing at the expense of the maxed-out velocity of a fully charged pitch. Use the nunchuk to put horizontal movement on the ball -- some characters can utilize this to a ridiculous level -- and/or hold A while pitching to throw a changeup that would drop the jaw of even pre-Mets Pedro Martinez or pre-Mets Johan Santana.
FIELDING: Almost everyone has a special defensive move this time around: Wario can gun a frozen rope to home plate from the outfield, some of the Kongs can scale the wall, etc. Chemistry comes into play all over the place. For example, relaying a cut-off throw from one affably-associated character to another will yield a super fast relay throw to the infield.
TOY FIELD: Has been totally reworked and is fucking amazing. You can now launch items at/melee attack other players, and the blue shell has been removed. The option to play 2-on-2 instead of being forced into a four player free-for-all is certainly a welcome addition.
BAD SHIT:
ADVENTURE MODE: Is an improvement, but still a joke. Way too much dialogue and bullshit. I suppose it serves as a sufficient (if boring) tutorial, though. Perfunctory.
CLASSIC CONTROLLER: Is not compatible. Oops!
GRAPHICS: Are truly horrible.