Like a groundball going through the legs of Bill Buckner, Super Mega Baseball 2 is a game that should have been a 9 and could have been a 10---it did all the hard things well---but unfortunately it missed the mark with some of the most basic features of baseball gaming. It's sad to think what could have been.
Playing SMB2 for the first time you will be like "Wow! This game is great."Like a groundball going through the legs of Bill Buckner, Super Mega Baseball 2 is a game that should have been a 9 and could have been a 10---it did all the hard things well---but unfortunately it missed the mark with some of the most basic features of baseball gaming. It's sad to think what could have been.
Playing SMB2 for the first time you will be like "Wow! This game is great." The game has a unique adjustable difficulty level, which is quite nice, several different teams for you to choose from and a very in depth and customizable league system for you to delve into. The gameplay is smooth and the graphics and overall atmosphere the game provides are fun.
Sadly, it won't be long before you start raising the difficulty and you will begin to see more and more where the developers dropped the ball with some very basic elements. Surprisingly, the hitting and pitching aspects of the game hold up very well throughout all the difficulty levels with batting being significantly more difficult, but it is the more basic aspects which become broken.
1) Fielding is very confusing. It is very hard to figure out how much you're supposed to control the fielder and how much the computer will help you so just assume you have to do everything yourself. There is no marker which shows you where the ball will land and your players are inconsistent at telling you when they're in the right spot so get used to missing a lot of routine fly balls and to catching a lot of routine fly balls running over-the-shoulder like Willie Mays. Diving and jumping for the ball are delayed so it is very hard to get anything right. Also, the computer, even on low difficulties, will perform like Mr. Mays or Ozzie Smith in their primes diving, jumping and robbing every ball in sight; that doesn't bother me so much though.
2) Baserunning is a joke. Even in much more primitive baseball games such as Baseball Stars or RBI Baseball, baserunning was never a problem. This is because in baseball there is zero reason to ever send two runners to the same base (unless that base is home), so you can have each base correspond to one direction on the D-pad and have one button "advance" and one button "return" a runner. SMB2 does things different. You can either advance, stall or return all runners then from there you are given control of the lead runner and can switch between runners using the L-stick and advance them accordingly. Sound confusing? It is and it shouldn't be. It's almost like the designers refused to let a simple thing be simple and they felt the need to make use of all 8 buttons and both control sticks at all times or something.
3) The umpiring is extremely inconsistent. Good luck figuring out what the strike zone really is and runners are called "safe" at more of reaching the 85 ft mark to the bag as opposed to having to go the full 90 ft; it makes it very hard to judge, defensively, where to throw the ball.
4) Controls. So pitching, you use the "square" and "X" buttons, but when you need make that split second decision to jump or dive for a ball off the bat...you use the L or R buttons or the R-stick...why? Your thumb is already on the "square" and "X" buttons from pitching, you are already thinking about those buttons and since you can't throw a ball you don't have, there's no reason these buttons can't also be "jump" and "dive". There are a lot of little things like this which will drive you crazy all because the designers felt the need to overcomplicate the controls because they "don't want to waste all those fancy buttons."
5) Season mode is single player or multiplayer same team co-op only...huh? Yeah. I understand that maybe the developers can't afford all those servers like the developers of The Show or Madden can so doing an online multiplayer multiteam season may be difficult or expensive, but there's no reason you can't do this locally. None. Why can I play a multiplayer multiteam season with my brother in Baseball Stars on NES made 30 years ago, but I can't do the same locally on a game and system from 30 years into the future? It's just headscratching.
Overall, SMB2 gets a 6 in my book, because the designers let the slow rolling ground balls go right through their legs...but somehow managed to make all the diving line drive catches.… Expand
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