Baseball Mogul 2008 – PC – Review

"They’ll
find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines where they
sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game
and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be
so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces." (Terence Mann in the
movie Field of Dreams)

Those lines,
from that classic baseball movie, are about dipping oneself in the history of
the game of baseball; how it is like dipping into honey – golden and wonderful,
moments remembered, glory rejoined in the classic American sport.

To trip back
into the past and call forth childhood heroes to yet again reach for
superstardom on the diamond, whether it is the crushing blow in a pivotal game,
or mastery on the mound.

In many ways,
Baseball Mogul 2008, from Enlight, captures the essence of all that. The game
does have a few failings, to be certain, but this is a cerebral exercise. This
is much like chess, but with random pieces that if played at the right times,
and the right strategy is employed, can turn a losing battle into a winning
proposition.

It can be eerie
to have one’s favorite team struggle, especially with relief pitching that seems
to only relieve the oppositions lack of baserunners, then realize – with a start
– that while your pitching staff is laboring, and the losses are tallying up,
your cyber team is boasting the same record as its real-life counterpart.

But back to the
basics of the game …

Baseball Mogul
2008 has Major League teams dating back as far as 1901. All the real players are
represented (more on their stats in a moment) in this game with minor league
prospects also in the game. Yep, that means you can jump in early enough and
trade for a player at the rookie level that you know will blossom into one of
the game’s elite.

The game has
four difficulty levels, from fan to mogul, and depending on the level you pick
to play at will determine how tough the game ramps up. The basic game plays on a
one-pitch basis. The game interface is broken down into three vertical blocks.
The first block, to the left, has the lineups. You can swap out players by
clicking there, see a text box score (it will show how many RBIs a batter has,
or how many Ks they have in that particular game and what they are at the plate
– 1/3, 2/5 and so on – during that game) and generally see who is due up in the
next half inning. The center panel/frame holds the animation. Consider it a DS
setup with the top screen showing the diamond, baserunners speed and the
location of runners on the basepaths. The bottom portion has a pitch and swing
animation. The latter can produce a few problems with the game. The panel on the
far right, has a text play-by-play of the game and shows the pitching/batting
matchup. This is useful to see how many pitches your hurler has delivered, the
slugging percentage of the batter as well as his on-base percentage. Along the
bottom is a score ticker that rolls along throughout the game.


Baseball Mogul 2008 Screenshot

The AI can be a
little suspect, at times. In its defense, you can’t rely on the graphics to show
how the ball was hit, but here is the situation – runners on first and second
with no outs and the ball is hit too short. The game thinks and then comes up
with one out on the runner forced at third. Hmm, seems to me that the smart play
would be to turn the double play and allow the runner to take third to get the
two outs rather than get the force and leave the double play possibility intact
with only one out. In the majority of cases, the next batter in the lineup
either struck out or popped up, meaning that instead of the inning being over,
the team at bat was allowed an extra out (in baseball terms). Now, this is not
always the case. There are times when the AI will have your infielders turn that
double play, conceding the run – but rarely will this happen if the team in the
field is trailing on the scoreboard.

Another error
in this game is the occasional lockups. The host computer for this review is
more than capable of handling this title. The minimum system specs are for a
P233 (on Pentium compatible) or better, 64 megs of RAM, Windows 98/XP/ME/2000,
monitor resolution of 256 or more colors and 75 megs of hard-drive space. The
host machine is a dual core but has an AMD processor, which may be the problem
since the game seems to want a Pentium. The host machine for this review was an
AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 5600+ 2.81 GHz with 3 gigs of RAM and a
300-gig hard drive running Windows XP Professional. Because the game plays so
quickly, you can whip through a nine-inning battle in about 10 minutes or so. A
week of play was washed away when the game locked up. And it was not a one-time
error. The game locked up during transitions of the ball being put into play –
as in during the batter’s swing animation. The score ticker at the bottom of the
screen stopped and trying to access anything on the menu bar resulted in the
infamous “program not responding” error message. The game, though I waited on to
see if it would resolve the issue, just would not come back and had to be exited
and restarted. Frustrating? You bet it is.

As for the
player stats … well, a variety of teams were pulled up to play. Having just seen
(again) a presentation of Eight Men Out, the 1919 Chicago Whitesox were locked
in, as were the Mariners in 2004, and several Cardinal teams – from 1972 up to
2007. It was amazing the number of ChiSox that had run speeds in the 90s (on a
scale of 100) and bunting prowess of 100. Comparatively speaking, even the
speedy Cardinal team of ’72 only had a couple of players with run speed in the
80s and higher. It would seem, though not verified, that stats are compiled on
an average in that time frame. It seems unlikely that baseball players in 1919
were generally faster than players of the modern era. As a race, humans are
bigger, stronger and faster than they were back then.

But does this
necessarily detract from the game? Absolutely not. The game does allow players
to create fantasy teams, but those teams are based on the real teams, and while
you can make all the trades your heart desires (a very easy thing to do – the
game even will give you hints at what the other team you are trying to trade
with will want in exchange for a top-tier player), you really can’t do much to
personalize the league to a great extent. A fantasy team (and yes, you can have
fictional players and even there is an option to select the year that you will
allow women to be drafted) must be based in a Major League city – you can’t have
it based in the small town you live in. Say you want to create a fictional team.
Well, you can’t pick Portland, or Boise, so go with Seattle as the closest town.
The game has a box to nickname your team. Gulls was typed in, the start date was
selected and the season launched. The team came up as the Seattle Bazookas.


Baseball Mogul 2008 Screenshot

And while the
game will suggest that such-and-such a player needs more time in the minors,
there doesn’t seem to be any way to gauge how they are progressing in the
minors.

All that aside,
though, Baseball Mogul 2008 is still an entertaining game. Once the game has
been loaded onto your machine, the disk need not be in the machine to run it.
Even with six seasons going (and you can save even in mid-game), the folder for
the game only took up 176 megs of hard-drive space.

The sound is
minimal to the point of being able to turn it off completely and not miss
anything. The graphics, while serviceable, provide the information but the
animation is not necessary – especially when it fails to portray the action
accurately.

Statistically,
the game is terrific. The way the game can turn to a positive slant with the
right substitution, or go into the toilet if you leave a pitcher in too long can
have you grinding your teeth. But generally speaking, it is that frustration,
that growling at this player or that, that is part and parcel of the game.
Making the right trades, promoting the right players at the right time, knowing
when to pull the plug on a pitcher and go to the pen, or calling for the
squeeze, steal, hit and run or run and hit – all these conspire to create a game
that has addictive qualities and will certainly have you second-guessing
yourself.

Baseball Mogul
2008 is not a reflexive game; it is a cerebral exercise. And it is nostalgic as
well. Even with its errors, this is still a good game.


Review Scoring
Details
for Baseball Mogul 2008

Gameplay:
7.0
You can whip through
a regular season 9-inning game in about 10 minutes. The control scheme is easy
to navigate. The problem is the crashes. The program will go along fine through
several  games and then suddenly hang up, forcing you to exit and lose all
progress. Not fun.

Graphics:
5.0
While all the
information you could want is at your fingertips, this game does not impress
visually. The split-screen DS-style center panels show the infield locations of
runners and fields while the bottom is the clickable area for starting the play
sequence. The problem here is that when the ball is hit, you can’t really tell
what might happen. The arc of the ball may look like a homer only to see the
message that the batter flew out to the outfield. Conversely, a grounder that
seems to be a few feet to either side of an infielder will run into the outfield
for a single. The lesson? Ignore the ball animation and just wait for the text
message on the right side of the screen that details the result of the play.

Sound: 1.0
The crack of the
bat and the dull roar of the crowd – that’s about it. No frills here.

Difficulty:
Easy/Medium
The game is easy to
jump into and play, particularly if you are a fan of the sport.

Concept: 8.0
A truly fine idea
and aside from the blips in situational AI, this is a game that captures the
essence of the managerial side of the sport. The options could have been a bit
deeper (like allowing the manager to call for a pitch out if you suspect a
baserunner is about to try to steal), but this game does a good job of capturing
the nuances of the game, from the front office to the dugout.

Overall: 7.5
The game has some
faults, but still provides a very entertaining time. It can be addictive, will
have you second-guessing yourself, will elicit growls of frustration when your
bullpen can’t get a single out and turns a winning proposition into a losing
affair – you know, all the things that make a real baseball game fun to watch.