Triple Play 2002 (Xbox)

While the real boys of summer are still working out all their kinks in spring training, EA Sports has just released the latest installment of its long-running Triple Play franchise for the Xbox. The game tries to strike a balance between delivering an authentic baseball experience and being a fun game to play, which it does quite well. The only question as to whether or not it's the right baseball game for you depends on what you're looking for.

Triple Play 2002 delivers an authentic set of features that includes all the teams, players, and stadiums from the MLB. You have your choice of four different gameplay modes: exhibition, season, playoffs, and a home run derby. The game's season mode lets you play a 15, 30, 60, or a full 162-game season with multiple players. You can use the default roster settings during a season or create your own players in the game's create-a-player mode, or you can even initiate the game's fantasy draft to get a completely new draft of the league. All the players during season play are tracked in 31 different statistical categories.

Whether you'll love or hate playing Triple Play 2002 almost solely depends on the type of baseball game you like to play, since the game tests not only your understanding of baseball strategy, but also your reflexes and timing. The game's batting interface is a fairly standard targeting system that gives you control of a targeting cursor. To get a hit, you have to line up the target with the destination of the pitch and also time your swing just right to make contact with the ball. The pitcher's cursor can be hidden, which leaves you with little more than a guess and a split second, from the time the pitcher releases the ball till it hits the strike zone, to see where the pitch is headed. The size of the batter's targeting cursor is determined by the ability and stats of the virtual batter's real-life counterpart, which makes your chances of hitting the ball realistic for each batter. For instance, when a batter the likes of Barry Bonds steps up to the plate, you'll see that his targeting cursor is very large, which makes it fairly easy for him to make contact with the ball. But when a player like Randy Johnson, who doesn't have great batting skills, steps up to the plate, you'll see that he has an extremely small target, which makes it difficult to get a hit. The ball physics, specifically once hit, are a bit more gracious in the game than they are in real life. On the game's easier difficulty settings, the computer lets you find the ball more often than not, which results in an inflated number of home runs. On the game's all-star setting, however, you'll be challenged by the computer-controlled pitchers, who seem to always find a way to get the ball past your batter, which results in scores and home runs that are more akin to what you'd see in the real MLB.

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