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Developer:
Team .366
Publisher:
3DO
Target Release Date:
March 2000
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By Amer Ajami
01/26/00
Page 1 of 3
The High Heat Baseball franchise has been a huge success for 3DO. The company's freshman effort in the series, High Heat Baseball 1999, came out two years ago and was applauded for perfectly blending the feel of an arcade-style game with a more hard-core sports sim. High Heat 99 wasn't without problems, however, and the lack of some crucial components like the Major League Baseball license and 3D players hurt what would have otherwise been an outstanding baseball game. These problems were addressed by the 3DO design team later that year when MLB teams and a full 3D graphics engine were introduced to the second High Heat game, cleverly called High Heat Baseball 2000. But as great as High Heat 2000 was (the game walked away with our 1999 Sports Game of the Year award), it too suffered from a few bothersome, albeit minor, flaws.
Click to enlarge |
In making the third game, 3DO and developer .366 are striving to fix all the problems found in last year's title while making sure that High Heat's successful gameplay formula remains unchanged. A few weeks ago 3DO was awarded an exclusive licensing agreement with Chicago Cub Sammy Sosa and, as a result, changed the name of the latest in the franchise to Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001. The deal between Sosa and 3DO is purely a marketing move however, and while Sosa's face might adorn the box and the game's opening sequences, don't expect High Heat to become a tribute to the Cubs slugger.
Click to enlarge |
We recently had a chance to play an alpha version of High Heat 2001 and were impressed by the promise of the game's improvements - improvements that include better management of players' fatigue levels during the play-offs, improved base-running AI, introduction of in-game saves, and pitch-spray replays. Even though the build we played still required around two to three months of development time, we were hard pressed to spot any of the glaring issues found in High Heat 2000.
Next:
At bat with High Heat
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