High Heat Baseball 2002

If graphics is impportant for you, buy an All-Stat baseball. Game.

I hope that High Heat 2003 is going to be better.


The Best PS2 Baseball Game To Date!   January 2, 2002
Nicholas Helfrick (A small town in GA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Okay, I know that I will not be the first to say, that if you are looking for graphics or a pretty game, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a solid baseball game that is fast-paced and fun to play, 3DO has hit a home run.
From a gameplay aspect, High Heat 2K2 is awesome. Depending on the settings, the game can be very easy in Rookie mode or difficult to the point of where you want to break your PS2 by the time you get to the highest level.
Hitting can be difficult at times; you have to be perfectly in line with the ball in order to make good solid contact. This is real baseball; no power swings, batting cursors, or speed bursts buttons.
Pitching is fun, as you can psyche out your opponent by throwing balls in the dirt, following with a fastball at the belt.
The little things make this game a gem. Errors, dropped third strikes, passed balls, charging the mound, ejections, etc. make this game what it is.
Where there is a good, there is a bad. High Heat only has limited game modes. It somehow missed a Home Run Derby or Batting Practice mode, as well as a playoffs mode. It lacks a Create-A-Player mode and a minor league system. 3DO states that this game was made for solid gameplay and next years HH2K3 should be a prettier, more polished version. I know that I can't wait. This game is well worth the money if you are looking for a solid, fun game.


I will never buy another edition of High Heat.   December 26, 2001
C. L. Stone (College Park, Maryland USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I just bought this game because I needed a baseball game for PS2 and I'm a big Guerrero fan. Oh, how I was disappointed. The game play is actually pretty good. I like the fact that there's no cursor for batting. It really feels like it takes some baseball knowledge to play, as you have to guess kind of pitch and location, which I actually got pretty good at after playing about 20 games. However, this doesn't overshadow the many cons of the game.
There are a laundry list of problems with the game. The scenes where the players walk to the plate is choppy. The dugouts are empty. Sometimes when you hit a homerun it looks like the guy is running across the plate from the first base side. The pitcher is choppy when throwing a pitch, and after throwing a pitch he goes straight back to his original stance, so he'll go instantly from crouching forward in front of the rubber after a pitch to standing on the rubber with no transition. The batter goes from the end of his swinging motion right back to his original stance (pretty much the same as the complaint about the pitcher). The umpires spin around as the "camera" spins around them, which looks stupid, but not as stupid as the fact that they have faces on both sides of their head. If the camera is rotating and you are pressing forward, your player runs in circles, because the controls are in relation to the view on the screen. I know there's more, but I don't have all day.
The problems seemed insignificant at first, but they pile up quickly and become very irritating. The game play is good, I don't know why 3DO had to cheap out when it came to touching up all the graphics parts of the game. The most irritating part is that the problems would have been easily fixable with a little bit of work. It's not like they were major bugs in the game. Neglecting these problems just looks like laziness on the part of 3DO, and it is that fact that will lead me to buy All-Star Baseball when the 2003 baseball games come out.


Could be better. Weak graphics and no joystick control......   December 12, 2001
Dennis F. Towle (Hayward, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Alot of gamers have praised this baseball simulation for it's gameplay alone. I think the gameplay is well done also, but the graphics looked absolutely horrible....and very choppy animation to go with it! The players' faces looked like they had gone 30 rounds in the ring, straight, with Lennox Lewis! The players run the bases and field like little Jawas. You control the players movements, pitches and swings by the analog pad instead of the important joystick....that was a really lame idea from 3D0! That is what turned me away from really appreciating this game....incredible graphics, control and gameplay is essential to have for a Playstation 2 baseball game, and this did not have all of those! Hopefully next year, they'll be better in putting out a much praised game that we all can agree with!


Fun and easy to play   November 5, 2001
K. J. Mulla (Port St. John, FL United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

What I like about HHB2K is that you don't have to go through a complicated series of button presses and cursor aiming to get a pitch off. I believe this keeps the game fresh and flowing smoothly. The graphics are good (could be better). The play-by-play announcers could use a lot of improvement. They don't really vary in what they say.

I would recommend this game to anyone who just wants to play a good game of PS2 baseball and doesn't want to scrutinize every detail.