GameSpot editors' review
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Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 01/23/2006
- Released on: 01/18/2006
- Originally published on GameSpot: MVP 06 NCAA Baseball (PlayStation 2) Review
As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Shut out of the MLB license by rival 2K Games, EA Sports turned a sour situation sweet by signing a deal with the NCAA to produce the first-ever video game based on college baseball. Not a bad idea, seeing as college baseball has a large fan base in certain regions, and that many diehard baseball fans will buy any video game built on the MVP Baseball engine, whether it features pro teams or not. Indeed, MVP 06 NCAA Baseball is just as intricate and playable as MVP Baseball 2005 was, and it brings with it a few minor tweaks that should please the MVP faithful. The overall presentation is rather bland though, mainly because EA Sports didn't do anything to jazz up the on-field atmosphere after removing the thumping sound systems and happy home run celebrations that served to set the mood in its MLB-based games.
This is the first-ever video game based on college baseball.
Because this is an NCAA-licensed product, you won't be able to send the Red Sox Nation up against the Bronx Bombers, but you can pair the 2005 College World Series champs, Texas, against runners-up Florida, or have Stanford square off against USC, which is a rivalry almost as intense as the one shared between Yankees and Red Sox fans. More than 100 NCAA Division I schools are available for play. All of the big conference teams, like those belonging to the SEC, Big 12, Conference USA, PAC-10, and so forth, made the cut. Smaller conferences, however, such as the Ivy League, Atlantic 10, and Mid-American conferences, did not. Neither did any Division II or Division III schools. Such oversights are unfortunate, but they can be remedied to some extent by making use of the game's individual player, team, and stadium editors. You may want to take advantage of those editors anyway, because all of the included players and roughly one-third of the 30 stadiums are fictional.
The list of play modes is pretty much identical to those included in last year's MLB-branded MVP Baseball 2005. Offline, you can get in a quick game in the exhibition or coach mode, practice your skills in the batting and pitching minigames, set up a specific situation in scenario mode, hit for the seats in the home run showdown, or take a team to glory in the tournament and dynasty modes. Online, you can participate in one-on-one exhibition games or try to take the top spot in a four- or eight-player tournament. The offline dynasty and tournament modes have undergone a few necessary NCAA-specific changes in this year's game. In the dynasty mode, instead of signing rookies and free agents to contracts, you have to recruit players out of high school by buttering them up with e-mails, phone calls, and campus visits. Meanwhile, the tournament mode lets you put together a tournament featuring anywhere from four to eight teams going at it in single- or double-elimination rounds.
College baseball isn't all that dissimilar from big-league baseball in terms of how the game is played, although there are some key differences. The most obvious is the use of aluminum bats, which, while cost-effective for schools on a budget, emit an annoying "tink" sound when the ball is hit and tend to produce faster line drives than a wooden bat would. While screaming line drives are a very unsafe situation, collegiate baseball has a number of rules in place that are meant to make the game safer. Take-out slides and home plate collisions are prohibited, for example, and the strike zone is smaller, which deters pitchers from throwing too far inside, and hitters from crowding the plate. For various reasons, lopsided scores are more common in college baseball. Aluminum bats and smaller ballpark dimensions are contributing factors, as is the generally low experience level of the players themselves. Perhaps in light of the college game's higher run output, there's a 10-run "mercy rule" effect, which ends the game early if one team outscores the other by 10 runs. These are college baseball's unique quirks, all of which (and more) EA Sports has gone to great lengths to implement into MVP 06 NCAA Baseball.
Aluminum bats are part of the college experience, but if you want, you can switch to wooden bats.
It's worth mentioning, though, that all of the game's NCAA-specific settings can be changed to so-called "summer" settings in the gameplay options menu. The aluminum bats can be swapped for wood, baserunning rules can be changed to allow hard slides, and the 10-run rule can be turned off. You can't play with major league teams, but if you want to play by the MLB's rules or make the game even more challenging, you can certainly do so within seconds, just by adjusting a few toggles and sliders.
For the most part, MVP 06 NCAA Baseball retains the same superb physics and controls that made MVP Baseball 2005 such a joy to play. Line drives, grounders, and pop hits behave just like the real deals, and there are also dozens of miscellaneous animations for infrequent and odd plays too, such as check-swing hits, booted balls, and off-line catches. The default pitching controls utilize EA's wonderful meter-based interface, which is the darling of diehard players everywhere. The baserunning controls let players control individual runners at the touch of a button, and you can preload stolen base attempts and choose various slides by tapping the different directions on the digital pad and right analog stick. The default fielding interface still lets you push the hustle button to sprint for distant balls, at the risk of injury or fatigue, and you still have to build power into subsequent throws by using a simple press-and-release meter. Not all is the same old, same old in this year's game, however; the default hitting and fielding controls have undergone a major shift into analog territory--to the right analog stick, that is.
They're calling the new hitting control method "Load and Fire," because it involves pulling the right analog stick backward to load power into the swing and yanking it upward to unleash the swing. You can also pull or push the ball by pointing the analog stick at an angle during the upstroke. There's a definite rhythm underpinning when to pull back and when to push upward, based somewhat on the pitcher's motion. You'll uncork a few dribblers and haymaker strikes trying to figure out that rhythm, but after you get used to it you'll feel like you have pinpoint control over the power and timing of your swing. To further complicate matters, you can also have your batter specifically try to swing for power or for contact by pressing the left or right triggers, respectively, while hitting. Whether this new interface is superior to the old ones will depend on your personal experiences with it. Thankfully, if you decide you prefer the old classic or zone-hitting interfaces, you can still enable them in the gameplay options menu. If you'll recall, zone hitting lets you swing with the press of a button and aim for a zone in the strike zone by positioning the right analog stick. In this year's game, zone hitting also makes use of the contact and power swing buttons, giving fans of that interface an added level of control.
This year, the default hitting interface uses the analog stick to simulate the swinging of a bat.
On defense, the process of throwing the ball between the bases has been given the analog treatment as well. Dubbed "precision throw control," in order to toss the ball to a particular base, players now have to pull the right analog stick toward the corresponding direction and let go of it when the visible indicator turns green. If you let go when the indicator is green, the throw will be on target. Let go too soon or too late, however, and it'll take a hop or veer offline. For sure, it's an interesting new take on the whole process of getting the ball where it needs to go. Unfortunately, this new method of throwing still has some kinks to be worked out, to the point that most players will probably dive in to the options menu and switch back to the classic setup in the early innings of their first game. Besides utilizing the traditionally accepted diamond layout for base selection, the old method also let players preload throws by holding down the button before the fielder caught the ball. The fielder would then make the catch and unfurl the throw in one quick, smooth motion. When the game is set to use the new analog method, fielders don't respond to analog stick inputs until they've caught the ball, which makes preloading throws impossible and often adds just enough of a delay to the process to turn routine plays into close plays and close plays into extra bases.
After you figure out which control options are right for you, you can sit back and enjoy what is on the whole an extremely realistic, albeit college-caliber, baseball simulation. The pitch speeds are reasonably fast. The ratio of ground balls, liners, and pop-ups feels right. The CPU is smart enough to set up double plays and to intentionally walk your best slugger when first base is open. You can warm up pitchers and make mound visits too, which can boost or kill your pitcher's stamina depending on your timing. Generally speaking, the collegiate game is less precise than the professional game, because rosters are more limited and because college players have less experience than professional players. MVP 06 NCAA Baseball takes these differences in makeup between the MLB and NCAA into account. You only have 25 players to work with, and there's no minor league roster to draw replacements from. Bullpens are limited to roughly three starters and three relievers, which is about half the staff that a pro team would carry. In an attempt to reflect the diminished experience level of college players, the pitchers in the game don't hit their spots as well as the pitchers in MVP Baseball 2005 did. For the same reason, hitters' hot and cold zones are less forgiving, and fielders are more prone to make offline throws and other errors. Errors and blown pitches are fairly common in MVP 06 NCAA Baseball--perhaps too common.
The pitching interface makes use of the fan-favorite precision-pitch meter.
Should you find yourself disliking a certain aspect of the game--say, fielders are too fast, or there are too many errors--you can always make adjustments to players' speed and accuracy by raising or lowering any of the 50 different sliders located in the gameplay-tuning menu. All told, MVP 06 NCAA Baseball nails the on-field nuances of the game, whether out of the box or after a few user-initiated tweaks.
In addition to nailing the on-field nuances in all of its play modes, MVP 06 NCAA Baseball makes great strides toward duplicating the off-field aspects through its intricate dynasty mode. Like the similar mode in previous MLB-licensed games, the dynasty mode puts you in charge of a single team for multiple seasons. You can set lineups, make substitutions, hire coaches, and play or simulate games throughout the season. Injuries, academic suspensions, and rainouts occur throughout a season, and sponsor and alumni challenges pop up from time to time as well. These random challenges add an extra layer of depth to the process, because by satisfying them you can earn new equipment and facilities for your program. In turn, your players will perform better on the field and make greater gains in the off-season.
Unlike in a typical MLB-style dynasty mode, new players aren't simply lured to the team with lucrative contracts; they're recruited. Recruiting is everything in college sports, and that's reflected in MVP 06 NCAA Baseball. Each season, you'll have access to a list of the nation's top high school players. During the season, you need to gradually butter them up by doing such things as sending mailers to their home, dropping in for personal visits, and making frequent contact via phone calls and e-mail. A recruit's interest level will dynamically change throughout the season, and you'll need to react accordingly. The only catch is that you start out with a limited amount of recruitment points that can be used to pay for such actions. To earn more points, you need to win games. The more you win, the more points you'll have to spend on recruiting. After the season is over, the recruiting process continues on a different track. The final step to bringing your new recruits to campus is offering them a scholarship and making promises with regards to playing time. Over time, your team will become more successful as you continue to bring better recruits into the program.
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