Game Spy Reviews

If you're like me -- and according to a CNN poll, you are -- the last thing you expect to be wrapping your thumbs around as autumn rolls in is a brand new baseball title. Football? Maybe, if you're not already bored of it. Basketball and hockey? Definitely. But baseball? Heck, I started previewing this season's games back in January. Isn't it about time I stopped thinking about pitch selection and double steals and moved on? That said, here comes Atari's Backyard Sports Baseball 2007. It's the follow-up to 2004's original Backyard hardball game, and hopes to make the national pastime more accessible to younger gamers. Well, better late than never. Not only does it ease a new generation into the strategic world of bunt situations and lineup tweaking, it manages to combine my two greatest passions -- baseball and the ability to play as an eight-year-old girl.

The first thing that you're going to notice about Backyard Baseball 2007 is that you get to play as Albert Pujols, Ichiro, and a mess of other major league players. Hang on! What about that whole multimillion-dollar power struggle between EA Sports and 2K Games that cost gamers the NFL 2K franchise and the MVP Baseball series? Doesn't 2K have sole rights to third-party use of the MLB license? Not exactly; apparently the rights exclude games designed for kids. So yes, you will get to go deep as Albert Pujols, but you'll have to do it in, say, a desert-themed stadium surrounded by cacti.



I was originally persuaded to check out this one by the news that a respectable gaming source gave the first Backyard game a very impressive eight-out-of-ten rating. I'm not sure exactly what game he was playing or what he was drinking, but if the first game was an eight, this much-improved version is a fourteen. Developer Humongous has really ratcheted things up for 2007. First off, the game is just prettier to look at. Characters are cleaner and crisper and the parks are visually more complex, varied and entertaining. No one is shooting for photorealism in the player models here. This is cartoony, big-head baseball all the way -- a domestic take on the likes of Konami's Japanese Powerful Pro Baseball series.

It's between the lines, though, that the game has gotten the most improvements. The original Backyard game played at a snail's pace. It was perpetual bullet-time. The ball would dribble off the hitter's bat and runners moved as if wearing weighted pants. It was frustrating, boring and unrealistic. For 2007, things have been sped up. Yes, this requires some slightly faster reflexes, but it was clearly developed for younger fingers, so there's a lot of forgiveness in getting your bat on the ball and your fielders to the right location.

The controller scheme has also been tweaked for the better. It's now incredibly intuitive and just about perfect. The face buttons indicate which base you're throwing to when in the field or running to when your team is up. While the pitcher has the ball on the mound, the directional buttons take over. If your team is on the field, they're used for pick-off attempts. If you're batting, they're used to steal bases. This simple yet efficient one-button scheme really lessens the learning curve for young gamers. The original game had you, for example, throwing with a face button while choosing your throw's direction with the D-pad.

All of the new polish isn't without its hitches. The load times can be lengthy. A minute to a grown-up gamer can be tolerable, but if you're only four years old, that same minute is actually a measurable percentage of your overall lifetime. Some of the venues can also be a little too fancy for their own good. A ball hit into the corner of the warehouse-like shipyard level seemed to get caught in an irretrievable spot, for example.

In both the single-game pickup-game mode and season mode, you can either pick your roster from an assortment of fictional kids and young versions of real-life players or you can have the game choose your team for you. Initially, you only have access to a few big leaguers, but achieving certain milestones will unlock more. The single-game mode offers two-player head-to-head action, but that's as deep as the multiplayer goes.



The season mode is surprisingly deep. It's no 25-year career affair, but for a game designed for the T-ball crowd, it's impressive. You can check day-to-day stats, fiddle with your lineup if you think the red-haired girl would be better batting third than the brown-haired girl, and trade players. Also cool is the ability to design your team uniform's color scheme.

Also adding to the fun are the in-game power-ups. The better you play, the more your power meter fills up. When it maxes out, you have access to certain batting and pitching bonuses. Use the "Slime Ball" batting power-up, for example, and the ball will be covered in an ooze that makes it tough to field. On the mound, throw a "Split Ball" which divides into two balls as it approaches the plate. There's even one questionably named power-up called the "Juice Box," which helps you regain your strength. Apparently, there's no drug testing in Backyard Baseball 2007.

Baseball is a tough sell to kids. Playing the real thing can seem boring compared to soccer or basketball, and the MLB hasn't done much to attract or keep a young audience by putting the most important games of the year on TV late at night. Hopefully, games like Backyard Sports Baseball 2007 can reverse all that. It's fast-paced, fun and presented in a kid-friendly way that should help teach young PS2ers about the greatest game of all. Yes, in theory, the baseball season should be wrapping up soon, but this disc will let the kids of summer play deep into fall this year.

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