Amazon.com Review
As usual High Heat Major League Baseball 2004 isn't quite as pretty as most of the competition, but the game does have a nostalgic look that's quite stylish--kind of like the difference between now-torn down County Stadium and the new Miller Park that replaced it in Milwaukee. A major area of improvement is in player animation. The players aren't stiff anymore; they move like human beings. A bit of graphics sheen was applied to the stadiums too, and while not the best, High Heat is finally a good looking game. Unfortunately, audio is merely okay. The problem isn't limited to dry and dull commentary. High Heat 2004 pretty much has the same soundtrack as High Heat 2003 and, the music often does not match action on the field. High Heat 2040 adds some 30 new pitches to the game, and the pitcher/batter interface so crucial to this game's success (it's the best in the business and it feels like real baseball) is still in place and looking good. High Heat plays a solid game of baseball that just feels right.
For perhaps the first time in the series (it's been running the bases since 1999), High Heat 2004 was first developed for the PlayStation 2 and then ported elsewhere. That doesn't make much of a difference for most console versions but buyers of the PC version will be disappointed. The port is sloppy. There's no mouse support and significant blurring at high resolutions (the menus don't scale). PC users are used to accessing all the stats, info, batting orders, etc., at the touch of the mouse. I can't imagine why this happened, because previous High Heat PC games have had mouse support. The PC version also is plagued with minor stability issues and, worst of all does not have any kind of multiplayer. High Heat games have had multiplayer since 2001, and the omission of multiplayer in 2004 is a tragedy.
High Heat 2004 for the console systems is a great game, certainly the best looking one yet in the series, but the PC version is much weaker than it should be.--Andrew S. Bub
Pros: Good looks, great gameplay Best pitcher/batter duel available in a baseball game Cons: Bad commentary PC version inexcusably marred by bugs, no mouse, no multiplayer
Platform: WINDOWS 98/ME/2000/XP Publisher: 3DO Packaging: RETAIL BOX Rating: EVERYONE High Heat goes beyond next-generation combining exceptional graphics seamless animation top-notch presentation and the deepest most challenging Franchise Mode ever with its already highly acclaimed baseball realism fast-action gameplay and the best pitcher-batter interface and Artificial Intelligence. Features: Stunning graphics All new player motion capture animation system and Renderware graphics engine! Broadcast quality presentation Including more high impact special effects than ever before. New Career and Franchise modes The most advanced Career Mode ever seen in a sports title. Two On Two Showdown mode Square off in the ultimate head-to-head competition! Ten game modes total means more variety and depth than ever before! Rich audio experience includes hecklers vendors crowds stadium announcer and two man announcer team. Advanced TruPlay A.I. means the most realistic batting base running fielding pitching and managing.System Requirements:Operating System: Windows98/Me/2000Pro/XP Home/XP Pro CPU: Pentium II 400Mhz Required (Pentium III 800Mhz recommended)Free Hard Disc Space: 300MB Memory: 64MB RAM (128MB recommended) CD-ROM Drive: 4X Speed Video Card: Supports DirectX8.1 compatible video cards with at least 16MB VRAM Sound Card: DirectX8.1 compatible 8-bit sound cards; (16-bit recommended Peripherals: Keyboard mouse all DirectInput-compatible game pads and joysticks.Note about Vista Compatibility:We have tested this program on a Windows Vista 64 System with a Nvida 8800 GTX graphics card. It was not Vista Compatible out of the box however we did get it to work by doing the following:1. Install the program in the Vista c:\Program Files (x86) folder. During the install you may get a "not enough memory" error but just ignore that and install the program to the indicated directory.2.
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