The Mayor
October 10th, 2008, 02:45 PM
Team Xbox posted a review of MLB Stickball, and gave it 8.5/10!
http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1592/MLB-Stickball/p2/
The number of light-hearted baseball games available for the Xbox 360 is exactly zero. A bit of a letdown, since Wii owners are swinging nunchuks like Louisville Sluggers in its oh-so-fun, bobble-headed baseball romp.
Someone at 2K Sports noticed the lack of pick-up style hardball and did something about it. Sure, the Major League Baseball 2K series is there for the die-hards, but what about the folks that don’t know—or care to know—what a balk is? The answer is MLB Stickball.
While stickball may not be familiar to those under 50 years old or outside of major Northeastern U.S. metropolises, the idea of stickball has been around for quite some time. Broom handles stood in for bats because…well, bats used to be expensive. Thanks to Chinese-made ripoffs, bats are no longer expensive, but traditional stickball still trudges on, if for no other reason but nostalgia and the satisfaction of actually hitting a tennis ball with an inch-thick dowel rod.
In 2K’s MLB Stickball, the basics of stickball have been preserved for a true pick-up-and-play experience. The “MLB” in the title, however, tells you that 2K went a bit beyond the normal pick-up game for Xbox Live Arcade’s latest Wednesday release.
Putting its MLB licensing rights to good use, 2K has included 120 pro players and all of the league’s teams for some added baseball pull-through. At start up, each team will come equipped with one pro player per four-person roster, with the chance to add additional pro players by spending points in the Card Shop. The rest of the roster is filled with generic character types featuring different attribute compositions, such as Power Pitcher, Power Hitter and Star Fielder.
The Card Shop enables Topps-branded baseball cards to be purchased in “packs” just like real cards, which also means that duplicate cards will eventually crop up in a collection. Three like cards in MLB Stickball gives the user the opportunity to unlock any player that they want for their squad. Five like cards and that player will get an attribute boost.
On the field…er, shall we say pavement/dirt, MLB Stickball plays like an arcade baseball game that has been made a bit sweeter with disproportionate characters (including the aforementioned MLB talent), big-city settings and those lovable stickball rules. The in-game visuals teeter the line between simple-to-consume and a-bit-too-basic, but there’s enough good about the overall presentation and art direction of MLB Stickball to make this one work just fine for an 800 Microsoft Points XBLA download (about $10). Just make sure that you lower the volume while consuming, unless you want every game to feel like it’s being played inside of an elevator.
Rule sets vary depending on the home field. So, for instance, you may need to hit a ball farther for a home run on a farm in St. Louis than you would in the shadow of the Golden Gate in San Fran. Foul balls all have different boundaries, too (over the brownstone’s in Brooklyn for example), and there are various, multi-base bonuses for plinking certain objects. But the really good news with a stickball rule set is that you won’t have to advance or retreat runners on the base pads. These cats just hit the ball and advance according to how far the ball has been hit. Simple and no thinking involved.
It’s worth mentioning that the basic rules of stickball—loosely based on baseball’s rules—apply to all of the sweet environments (six in all) in MLB Stickball. You’ll want to follow the more basic, Willie Keeler rule on the offensive side of things, however: “Hit ’em where they ain’t.” That involves properly timing a press of either the A button for a normal swing or the B button for a power swing. With good timing, any pitch inside the strike zone can be hit; from there, the result of the contact is based on basic hitting and power attributes assigned to each player.
Pitching in MLB Stickball is a bit more intricate. Four pitch types, including the traditional stickball “bounce” toss and the ever-popular “Eephus,” are programmed to the face buttons. A power gauge fills up and stops once the face button is released. Aiming is handled with the left stick. Depending on the hurler’s aim attribute, the target reticle might be a pixel or two or as big as a house. Then, the same pitching strategy from MLB 2K applies: Pick the corners, vary the speed and never, ever throw one down the chute.
MLB Stickball’s action is, for the most part, pick-up-and-play entertaining, while still being close enough to pro baseball’s roots to appeal to the more hardcore folks. Both the hitting and pitching systems feel as if they were plucked straight from a MLB 2K game, thoughtfully dumbed down, and now requisite for a Live Arcade game featuring bobbleheads. The only real downside is that, similar to real baseball, there’s not a whole lot of variance from inning to inning.
Not even the MLB rule setters can make real baseball exciting, and similarly, not even hitting a chicken coop with a tennis ball can make stickball exciting. A Tour mode—where teams will travel and face increasingly difficult competition—adds a bit of flair, as does the four-player local/Live play, but it’s still not enough to keep Doubleday’s repetition monsters at bay.
Even with some signs of the major league’s style of repetitiveness, MLB Stickball is still one for those that have been waiting for mindless baseball fun in convenient, XBLA packaging.
Achievements
Scoring Achievements in MLB Stickball is as fun as actually scoring in the game. There’s nothing too tough here, which keeps with the airiness of this title. 2K will dole out some big, thirty-count point totals as well, for those with the fortitude to unlock every player or for the skill-based users who can nail the water tower in NYC.
Here’s the complete breakdown:
Vandal—Break any window for an out. (5 points)
Retire the side—Go three up, three down in an inning. (5 points)
Patriot—Hit a home run in Boston. (10 points)
Pro Team—Collect full team of pros. (10 points)
Grand Slam!—Hit a grand slam. (10 points)
Skill is all you need—Win a ranked match with a team of amateurs. (20 points.
Shut’em down—Throw a no-hitter in a ranked match. (20 points)
Cycle—Hit for the cycle with one player in tour mode. (20 points)
Wagon Wheel—Hit the wheel on the barn in St. Louis. (20 points)
For Three!—Hit the basketball rim in Chicago. (20 points)
Card Collector—Collect all 120 MLB baseball cards. (30 points)
Water Tower—Hit the water tower in Brooklyn. (30 points)
Overall: 8.5/10
http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1592/MLB-Stickball/p2/
The number of light-hearted baseball games available for the Xbox 360 is exactly zero. A bit of a letdown, since Wii owners are swinging nunchuks like Louisville Sluggers in its oh-so-fun, bobble-headed baseball romp.
Someone at 2K Sports noticed the lack of pick-up style hardball and did something about it. Sure, the Major League Baseball 2K series is there for the die-hards, but what about the folks that don’t know—or care to know—what a balk is? The answer is MLB Stickball.
While stickball may not be familiar to those under 50 years old or outside of major Northeastern U.S. metropolises, the idea of stickball has been around for quite some time. Broom handles stood in for bats because…well, bats used to be expensive. Thanks to Chinese-made ripoffs, bats are no longer expensive, but traditional stickball still trudges on, if for no other reason but nostalgia and the satisfaction of actually hitting a tennis ball with an inch-thick dowel rod.
In 2K’s MLB Stickball, the basics of stickball have been preserved for a true pick-up-and-play experience. The “MLB” in the title, however, tells you that 2K went a bit beyond the normal pick-up game for Xbox Live Arcade’s latest Wednesday release.
Putting its MLB licensing rights to good use, 2K has included 120 pro players and all of the league’s teams for some added baseball pull-through. At start up, each team will come equipped with one pro player per four-person roster, with the chance to add additional pro players by spending points in the Card Shop. The rest of the roster is filled with generic character types featuring different attribute compositions, such as Power Pitcher, Power Hitter and Star Fielder.
The Card Shop enables Topps-branded baseball cards to be purchased in “packs” just like real cards, which also means that duplicate cards will eventually crop up in a collection. Three like cards in MLB Stickball gives the user the opportunity to unlock any player that they want for their squad. Five like cards and that player will get an attribute boost.
On the field…er, shall we say pavement/dirt, MLB Stickball plays like an arcade baseball game that has been made a bit sweeter with disproportionate characters (including the aforementioned MLB talent), big-city settings and those lovable stickball rules. The in-game visuals teeter the line between simple-to-consume and a-bit-too-basic, but there’s enough good about the overall presentation and art direction of MLB Stickball to make this one work just fine for an 800 Microsoft Points XBLA download (about $10). Just make sure that you lower the volume while consuming, unless you want every game to feel like it’s being played inside of an elevator.
Rule sets vary depending on the home field. So, for instance, you may need to hit a ball farther for a home run on a farm in St. Louis than you would in the shadow of the Golden Gate in San Fran. Foul balls all have different boundaries, too (over the brownstone’s in Brooklyn for example), and there are various, multi-base bonuses for plinking certain objects. But the really good news with a stickball rule set is that you won’t have to advance or retreat runners on the base pads. These cats just hit the ball and advance according to how far the ball has been hit. Simple and no thinking involved.
It’s worth mentioning that the basic rules of stickball—loosely based on baseball’s rules—apply to all of the sweet environments (six in all) in MLB Stickball. You’ll want to follow the more basic, Willie Keeler rule on the offensive side of things, however: “Hit ’em where they ain’t.” That involves properly timing a press of either the A button for a normal swing or the B button for a power swing. With good timing, any pitch inside the strike zone can be hit; from there, the result of the contact is based on basic hitting and power attributes assigned to each player.
Pitching in MLB Stickball is a bit more intricate. Four pitch types, including the traditional stickball “bounce” toss and the ever-popular “Eephus,” are programmed to the face buttons. A power gauge fills up and stops once the face button is released. Aiming is handled with the left stick. Depending on the hurler’s aim attribute, the target reticle might be a pixel or two or as big as a house. Then, the same pitching strategy from MLB 2K applies: Pick the corners, vary the speed and never, ever throw one down the chute.
MLB Stickball’s action is, for the most part, pick-up-and-play entertaining, while still being close enough to pro baseball’s roots to appeal to the more hardcore folks. Both the hitting and pitching systems feel as if they were plucked straight from a MLB 2K game, thoughtfully dumbed down, and now requisite for a Live Arcade game featuring bobbleheads. The only real downside is that, similar to real baseball, there’s not a whole lot of variance from inning to inning.
Not even the MLB rule setters can make real baseball exciting, and similarly, not even hitting a chicken coop with a tennis ball can make stickball exciting. A Tour mode—where teams will travel and face increasingly difficult competition—adds a bit of flair, as does the four-player local/Live play, but it’s still not enough to keep Doubleday’s repetition monsters at bay.
Even with some signs of the major league’s style of repetitiveness, MLB Stickball is still one for those that have been waiting for mindless baseball fun in convenient, XBLA packaging.
Achievements
Scoring Achievements in MLB Stickball is as fun as actually scoring in the game. There’s nothing too tough here, which keeps with the airiness of this title. 2K will dole out some big, thirty-count point totals as well, for those with the fortitude to unlock every player or for the skill-based users who can nail the water tower in NYC.
Here’s the complete breakdown:
Vandal—Break any window for an out. (5 points)
Retire the side—Go three up, three down in an inning. (5 points)
Patriot—Hit a home run in Boston. (10 points)
Pro Team—Collect full team of pros. (10 points)
Grand Slam!—Hit a grand slam. (10 points)
Skill is all you need—Win a ranked match with a team of amateurs. (20 points.
Shut’em down—Throw a no-hitter in a ranked match. (20 points)
Cycle—Hit for the cycle with one player in tour mode. (20 points)
Wagon Wheel—Hit the wheel on the barn in St. Louis. (20 points)
For Three!—Hit the basketball rim in Chicago. (20 points)
Card Collector—Collect all 120 MLB baseball cards. (30 points)
Water Tower—Hit the water tower in Brooklyn. (30 points)
Overall: 8.5/10