Triple Play Baseball

The perfect game for the casual baseball fan. The controls are easy to learn, hitting is a breeze, and even at the hardest levels, the AI isn’t that hard.

The graphics are excellent, to be sure, but it's a little disturbing that the PlayStation 2 graphics for the game look better than the PC.

Some of the additions are commendable, particularly the player editor, improved statistics, free agency, and post-game wrap-ups, but this game just doesn’t feel like baseball.

Its games last too long, there's too much of an emphasis on offense, and pitching and defense are virtual afterthoughts. This may sound discouraging, but even with these problems, the game can still hold a national interest.

Offense has completely consumed the Triple Play Baseball series... Every other aspect of the real sport has also been dumbed down to the point of irrelevance. Pitching, baserunning, fielding, and those all-important managerial moves mean nothing as long as you have good hand-eye coordination. Gameplay has devolved to a simple button-pushing exercise.

The latest release in this hopelessly unrealistic arcade series that just fell yet another notch on the realism scale.

In baseball parlance, we figure we'll wait till next year.

While it graphically looks fairly good, its simulation of the sport places the emphasis squarely on offense, and that's just not how baseball is played.