#37: Nolan Ryan's Baseball

Celebrity endorsed!

With a player the calibre of Nolan Ryan on the title screen I had high hopes. This is the third baseball game in 37 total games, which seems like a lot, but it was the first one with an actual player on the front. One of the previous baseball games got a C rating, the other is currently third overall in my rankings. How would this one fare?

Ooh, cutscenes for close plays!

Well, let me put it to you this way... I played three innings and decided to quit. I couldn't bring myself to even finish a single game. You'd think with a pro player in the title that the game would actually play like a pro game. You're playing in a big stadium with a huge crowd. You can play a full season. So why does the game feel like it's being played by players at my baseball skill level?

Other than hitting homeruns, that is.

The players all look like little kids on the field, and they play like them. The computer hit the ball right at my shortstop. He tried to throw the runner out at first base. He threw it in a big arc, and the ball had to bounce before it made it there. The runner was safe by a mile. This is exactly how my last few years of baseball went. I didn't have any arm strength at all and I simply couldn't throw the ball all the way from short to first. It made me a terrible, terrible player and no one should have wanted me on their team. How this pro game can feel like it can get away with having me play third base is mind boggling.

It doesn't stop there. Most hits couldn't make it out of the infield, and only one (the home run above) made it to the wall. As a result hitting was an exercise in frustration. Fortunately the computer seemed mostly incapable of putting the ball over the plate so I scooped up walk after walk by simply refusing to swing. This, again, is how I played baseball as a kid. I'm sure I lead the league in walks the year I kept accurate stats for my own team. I had something like .920 on base percentage. By never swinging. Because I knew I couldn't hit the ball hard enough to get it out of the infield. And when you're 9 years old maybe that makes sense. When you're in a pro baseball game, not so much.

The computer was no better at hitting the ball, or in figuring out when to swing. I found that if I threw a fastball right over the outside corner of the plate he'd never swing but it would be a strike. So if I found the right position each at bat I was guaranteed to get a strike out. This isn't fun. It's incredibly boring.

Fielding also worked counter-intuitively. Normally in a baseball game when the ball is hit towards third base your thirdbaseman would go and get the ball and shortstop would automatically cover third base. You'd be controlling the thirdbaseman. But I'd try to control the thirdbaseman, actually be controlling the shortstop, and run him the wrong way. While the thirdbaseman happily jogged to third and ignored the ball HIT RIGHT AT HIM! GAH!

I almost feel like I should be a little lenient with the rating because it does have a lot of nice league features. You can play a full season, you can trade players around, you can even make your own players. I do like these sorts of things, and normally those would be the features that would push a game over the top for me. But pushing a giant pile of garbage over the top doesn't really help you out. You're still standing behind a giant pile of garbage. I feel bad for the poor people on the other side of the hill... You're just going to be dumping garbage on their heads.

It also doesn't use nearly enough buttons. I could only find a use for A and B, and those uses were reversed from how most games work.

I didn't play this game as a kid, and I am incredibly thankful for that. This game sucks.

Rating: F-