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Information Updated: 5/28/2004 Midway has come along way in a year. Last year we remember Roadkill, a weak twisted Metal rip that just didn’t cut it in the end. Also Midway Pro-sized their sports series for Hitz and Blitz and quite honestly took out the elements of those games that set them apart from the bunch and were so damn fun. You can imagine my hesitation when I booted up my near final build of MLB Slugfest Loaded. Will this game be watered down? Have they taken out all the wacky elements of this series too? You’ll be happy to hear that not only have they kept the title “as crazy as they wanna be,” but they managed to give the players an option to choose just how simulated or arcade style you want to play. In Slugfest Loaded, you can choose from Slugfest mode, MLB Classic, or Custom Style game play modes. Slugfest is tried and true, over the top, on fire bench clearing madness of old. MLB Classic tries to lean to a more traditional method of baseball taking out all the way out style pitches and slowing the pace to a more reasonable level. Custom mode allows players to choose just how much arcade or simulation you care to input in your game. This way everybody is happy.
2 new major additions to Slugfest this year are Xbox Live play, including new 3.0 Live elements (tourneys, etc), and a Franchise mode complete with a full fledge baseball mogul too boot! Now checking your stats, moving your players, signing free agents, adjusting your lineup, budgeting your payroll, moving your rotation, and more can be done in the Slugfest series. This is a welcome addition. The stats page is nice as it simulates a newspaper of sorts. You see a headline like,“Clemens strikes out 10 in Houston win”, and then underneath you’ll read details like, “Roger Clemens pitched 8 innings, allowing only 3 runs and 6 hits while striking out 8 to reach his 4 win of the year.” It’s nice to see that Midway finally added this depth to the series. Visually the game remains as beautiful as ever, if ever so corny in some aspects. The player models are still bulky, but the faces are as nice as MVP, if not better, especially where the stars are concerned. The stadiums are dead on and seem to have a good size scale as well. Of course the crazy pitches, on fire players, and ball trails return for over the top effects, but as I mentioned before, this can all be disabled if you choose so. (Of course my question is if you waited this long to play the series, why would you? But hey, I’m glad the option is there.) Audio returns, but in this build some of the commentary was a bit off and hopefully will be rectified by release time. What has returned is the same brilliant and hilarious play by play by Tim Kitzrow and Jim Shorts. The game is alive and vibrant, which is nice to see since the fans in real life don’t occupy the seats like in Slugfest. It feels like 1980 all over again! Lastly, the game play is what most of you have come to expect from the series. Once again, some of the physics have been tweaked, but in the end the game is fast paced and frantic in Slugfest mode. In MLB Classic mode, you will see a big diversity in the pacing of the game. No more fights, on fire, or crazy pitches here, but don’t expect ground breaking realism either. The game in this build was still rather hit happy in classic mode, but maybe that all could be tweaked. Fielding gets better and better with each new addition, and it’s nice that I can judge balls to the outfield more accurately this year. I don’t want to dwell on this aspect of the game as for one it’s not a finished build, or have I played enough of it to really give it a reasonable criticism. I’ll save that for my review, which you can expect by the end of June, which is about when the game is due to come out. I’ll give a compete rundown and in depth of the feature and online play when the game hits shelves. For now, all I can say is that Midway is at the top of their game right now, and Slugfest fans will be in store for the best version yet.
Traditional baseball games are always fun to play, but there is something to be said for over the top versions such as Midway's MLB SlugFest series. The rules are mostly the same, but the arcade-like gameplay and spectacular abilities and effects are sometimes much more enjoyable. MLB SlugFest: Loaded is the only baseball videogame for the 2004 season featuring Midway’s classic fast and furious gameplay with beanballs, hard tags, and over-the-top animations. This year’s SlugFest features today’s greatest baseball players with the addition of over-the-top abilities, including turbo-speed running, highlight reel-worthy fielding, earth-shaking collisions and, as one would expect from a Midway Sports title, the ability for a player to catch fire and turbo charge the game action. In addition, all-new gameplay features add a measure of depth and adrenaline yet to be matched by competing, simulation-like baseball titles: Customizable Instant Replay, providing gamers with complete control of the numerous camera angles available to get the best view of towering home runs and diving catches, Exploding Scoreboards, giving players the ability to light up stadium jumbo-screens with one swing of the bat, and also, the most updated MLB team rosters available in any game of its kind. Furthermore, players will be able to for the first time in the SlugFest series, take coaching skills, players and/or teams online for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox Live, one of only three 2004 baseball games to have such capabilities. Additional online capabilities will include voice chat using an optional headset and an on-screen sports Ticker Tape that allows players to track ongoing MLB action with a live news feed from MLB.com, offering up-to-date scores and stats. It also fe! atures an Online Tournament Mode which allows online users to match-up at anytime and anywhere against the stiffest competition coast-to-coast where winners take all and the losers goes home. MLB Slugfest: Loaded also includes a completely original soundtrack from new breakthrough bands, including tracks from Ivory Wire, Buckfast Superbee and Flipswitch.
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