Backyard Sports Baseball 2007 Gba
By Pauline Clay |
The 'Backyard' franchise is an odd beast. On one side, the games are licensed by official syndicates such as the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL. In addition, each game features some of the top stars in the game today, as well as each of the respective teams in professional sports. The game sells for a budget price, and is an oblivious introductory franchise to get younger gamers into sports. On the flipside, however, is the obvious truth. In order to stay in the budget category, the games look dated, feel rushed, have glaring balance issues, and are often amazingly scaled down versions of the pro franchises they represent. This year the Backyard franchise comes to PS2 and PC with Backyard Baseball 2007, and once again we're seeing that just because a game has the official MLB logo on it doesn't mean it has any right being looked at as a legitimate source for baseball.
When it comes to basic presentation, the Backyard series has never been amazingly spectacular. Backyard Baseball offers a few different gameplay modes such as Pick-Up Game and Season Game, as well as Home Run Derby and Fielder's Challenge mini games. Unfortunately, the overall player roster has only a handful of characters, and while players like Alex Rodriguez and Johan Santana are included in the mix, the overall amount of baseball's finest is just far too small for how simplistic the game's visual presentation is. If it wasn't for the names under the characters, there'd be little to set apart players aside from a few head shapes and skin tones, and even then there isn't much to go off of. For a game that's officially licensed by the MLB, we'd assume more of the game's greatest could be included, rather than filling the roster slots with made up male/female 'backyard' characters.
Even though the game's presentation elements are a bit of a letdown in the overall amount of gameplay options and playable characters, we'd still be able to recommend the game if it had solid gameplay. Unfortunately, Backyard Baseball 2007 is seriously lacking in the gameplay department, as it is full of bugs, is unbalanced with player speed and hitting power, and gives off an overall unfinished feel to the game. For starters, the fielding characters run amazingly slow, and while the game has auto-fielding available for novice players, most deep hits will result in huge doubles or triples due to sluggish outfielders.
In addition, the game isn't as friendly as it could be for younger players. Hitting can actually be pretty challenging even when the auto-aim is on, and the controller layout is borrowed from more mature baseball franchises, having the fielders throw to each of the four bases with the respective face buttons. On PS2, the control layout is amazingly complicated for a children's title, having players switch fielders with the shoulder buttons, manage each base-runner simultaneously with the face buttons, and call off runners with a two-button combination including the base they're running to and L1. When it comes to pitching and batting, similar problems arise, and younger gamers are expected to feather the analog stick to pitch within the strike zone, or aim the bat cursor to hit a desired pitch. The stick control feels very crude and placeholder, and though bat aim can be turned on or off, players will want to keep it off at all times, as the control just doesn't feel fine-tuned enough for what is needed.
Along with the gameplay elements of Backyard Baseball, the visual aspects of the game are seriously lacking. For starters, the graphical design is amazingly dated, feeling like a mid-generation PSX game rather than a final-generation PS2 game. The character models are very generic, the field textures are extremely simplistic and don't line up when the patter repeats, and the entire game suffers from an extremely low poly count. Just because a game is simplistic and geared towards a younger audience doesn't give it an excuse to lack visual composition, and Backyard Baseball is one of the most scaled down PS2 games we've seen this year.
And on the audio side, things don't get any better. Backyard Baseball attempts to give a kid-friendly feel to the game with a good mix of younger voice talent, but it just doesn't come through. The voice acting is atrocious, and the audio mixing is terrible, often playing two or even three voiceovers at the same time with no attempt at fading or mixing the audio levels. There are even huge issues in the opening movie for the game, as you can actually hear the horrible compression of the audio, which sounds like it's coming out of a low-quality children's toy speaker, rather than a home console capable of outputting at Dolby Pro Logic II. There's no reason to keep the audio on in the game, and if you find yourself with a copy of this game in your household, mute your TV immediately.
Mar 13, 2014 Play Backyard Sports - Baseball 2007 for Game Boy Advance Online: Submitted by mlb789 of vizzed.com using the RGR Plugin.
Backyard Sports - Baseball 2007
Backyard Baseball 2007 is a baseball game with kids, including young versions of, at the time of release, active MLB players. The graphics are on the cartoony side and the play on the field mostly arcade oriented. The majority of time is spent with batting or pitching which rely on timing, there is also active fielding and management of the base runners. Power-ups can be activated when the power meter is filled up and give certain advantages, e.g. the 'split ball' power-up for pitchers causes the ball to divide into two. There are various difficulty options which can be turned on or off like automatic fielding or deactivating bat aim (when activated, the player actively has to aim into the direction the ball is supposed to fly).
The game modes are quick matches (also available for two players), a season mode with the ability to change the lineup and some statistics and two mini games (Home Run Derby and Fielder's Challenge which is basically fielding training). The player can either use pre-defined or customized teams and some things (e.g. the young MLB athletes or better leagues to play in) have to be unlocked by completing achievements.