Cheat Index - World Series Baseball 2K3 XBox Review

World Series Baseball for the Sega Saturn has long been my favorite baseball game. Whenever I played another baseball series, I compared it to my love for WSB. Some came close, but none could stack up to Sega's masterpiece. Having spent the past few weeks playing World Series Baseball for Xbox, I can finally unplug my Saturn and pack up my old WSB. World Series Baseball Xbox is now my favorite baseball game of all time.

Features

Every major league player, team, and stadium
Amazingly deep franchise mode with coaches and scouts who offer advice
Uneven trades, minor league rosters, and a rookie draft
Incredible graphics and player-specific crowd taunts
Hall of Fame team featuring 25 of the greatest players of all time
Old school uniforms so you can play like it's 1969
Only on Xbox
Gameplay

Here's what many gamers have come to expect from a baseball title: you hit too many homers, the computer makes some utterly ridiculous base running moves, and after forty or so games it's just not fun anymore. Such is not the case with World Series Baseball. Blue Shift has managed to make a baseball game that is not dominated by the long ball. The contests in WSB are often close games with realistic scores and stats. Games don't drag, not even games reaching into the extra innings, and you won't have many (if any) games where you score twenty runs and collect forty hits. Let's lay it out right now -- World Series Baseball is the best baseball game of 2002 on any system. If you love baseball, go buy the game right now and then come back and read the rest of this review.
Controls

WSB Xbox shares similar controls to WSB 2K1 for Dreamcast. The face pad is used to throw to the various bases, with the left trigger switching fielders and the right trigger causing a fielder to dive for a ball. The transition from batter to fielder is well-timed. The camera never stays focused on the batter for too long, so you won't have a problem fielding a ball in the infield because of a wonky camera. With quick reactions, you'll find yourself snaring liners and getting to grounders that would seem out of reach. Pressing a face button before you have the ball will cause the fielder to perform a harder, smoother, and more immediate throw after fielding the ball.

The batting interface is about as simple as can be. You have a batting cursor which changes size slightly depending on a hitter's ability. There is no "power swing" button. You can bunt with Y or you doa normal swing with A. Home runs are based on where the ball hits the bat, when, and how good a home run hitter the batter is.

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