MLB Slugfest 20-04 - PlayStation 2

Thank you for bringing back the memories I thought I lost.

I ordered 2004 and got 2003 in the 2004 case. But I like both

I love baseball very much and I generally enjoy realism in video games, but have found most of the sports games frankly post-SNES to be difficult to get the controls down.With baseball games, for example, I cannot stand having to locate my swing where the pitch is going to be, adjust the power bar, etc etc etc. I just like being able to press one button to swing the darn bat and time the swing well - have the timing be the major factor, in other words. So I do think while realism is important with some genres of games, I much prefer the game being FUN, since it is a video GAME. This is kind of like the baseball version of NBA Jam.SO, that being my intro to this review, this game achieves being quite fun and very replayable. My review is less of any sort of format and more of just "random notes" about the game:First and foremost, you can punch guys. You can sometimes punch guys such that they drop the ball and you can try to steal the next base. You can also punch guys just for fun if you are on the defense. Sometimes you will basically get punching matches which don't really result in anything other than it is fun and great in a baseball game! Next, you can slide tackle guys. See above for the effects. Lastly, the game has an "On Fire" effect where a player becomes on fire and thus all abilities are hyper-increased and no turbo is used. Like beaning guys? You will find quickly that this may result in the guy you bean charging the mound and sometimes getting on fire.When you hit a homerun you can press a button that buzzes your buddy's controller. It is fun for you and annoying to them! Sometimes the screen does nothing with homeruns, other times if you time your swing right it makes a satisfying sound and you get the full homerun effect.With fielding, you can hold the L2 button on a pop-fly and do a cocky catch. This sometimes backfires though as you may find out. You can also hold turbo and make amazing plays (dives, jumps, catching & throwing the ball while in the middle of doing a flip). It is not at all uncommon to be gunned out at first base by hitting a ground ball to the left fielder. Also, sometimes if the batter powers a line-drive it can bounce off an infielder's face which given it is a video game is hilarious.In season mode and in general you will probably quickly realize that your pitchers will not have the lowest of ERAs. However you can still wisely vary your pitches and the use of turbo with them to throw batters off - I will have games occasionally where I do really well pitching, it just takes a lot more patience.You can enter codes (easily locatable by using search engines online) to allow everything from unlimited turbo to having a rubber ball (FUN in AstroTurf fields!) to whiffle bats to playing in Atlantis, to having all the players on a team look like clowns or minotaurs.The announcers are a big part of this game too - they say REALLY corny and funny stuff, tell weird brief stories at times, and eventually, after you have played the game long enough, will probably need to be muted/deactivated since they do get irritating!!! But very entertaining until it reaches that point where you hear the same comment for the hundredth time.Random tip: if you don't mind having the name of your favorite team being something else, I enjoy using the create-a-team feature then playing with that team in season mode, and I use the Devil Rays as my template team since they seem to have one of the larger rosters in the game. So what I mean by this, is I like creating a "Seattle Mariners Dream Team" containing all the best players the Mariners had that were available in this game, however the M's team itself in this game has fewer players you can have on the roster than the Devil Rays. SO, I use the Devil Rays and then just trade all the players to create my M's dream team, then choose Safeco Field as my home stadium. It's great: The Big Unit, Griffey, Beltre, Vizquel, Ibanez, Lowe, etc.My five main cons for this game are (the last two are a bit nit-picky):1. No way of playing an All Star game, which seems like kind of a basic for any baseball game. If a Super Nintendo game can have it, then a PS2 game should be able to have it. If they have homerun derby, than they should have an All Star game option.2. I have had two separate discs of this game (bought another after losing the first sometime over the past years) and played on three separate PS2s, and experienced the game freezing at times - it mostly seems to happen when I am annihilating the other team (like 25+ runs on them), so perhaps the game just cannot take that much data, though it has frozen while trying to load a home run derby on occasion. That is very frustrating since it makes you have to save after every game in season mode so if the game does freeze you don't lose multiple games played. These are not the types of freezes where you can open the CD lid and close and have the game start again. Were it just one copy OR one PS2 I would think it was something I did. But this loses one star - a big star - but not enough to take 2 stars off, since most of the fun of the game is doing other things then season mode.3. The fastball with turbo in this game is pretty much unhittable. Most of the other pitches you can get the timing down, even most of the special pitches and the knuckle ball to a degree, but you might as well use a high fastball with turbo as your primary strikeout pitch, because it is so much faster than other pitches the batter has to be expecting it to hit it, regardless of who is pitching it.4. Jaime Moyer does not have a changeup in this game.5. Mike Mussina has a knuckle ball.A final sort-of-con/sort-of-hilarious thing with this game are some of the glitches. It definitely has them. Most are not a big deal (pitcher on instant replay magically releases ball without holding onto it), but there have been a few times with hitting where a ball that ended up being foul (like very clearly foul) was counted as a homerun, and my favorite: in Fenway particularly I've hit hard bouncing hits to left field, the ball goes THROUGH the wall randomly, and THAT is called a homerun).Bottom-line: GREAT game. Loads of fun. If you are looking for realism, look elsewhere and don't be mad if you bought this game expecting that and don't find it (1 minute of research will tell you that). Super fun with all the different options! Well-worth the money (though at this point I would not spend more than $10 on it just because of how old it is now).

I'm sorry to give you this rating, but the product went wrong and I could not enjoy the game.

Super fun if you play it as an arcade game. Super hits, pitches and punches. And the home run derby is fun.Plays well as a regular baseball game as well.PS2 classic.

Game i used to play alot back then, its simply and fun to play until you get striked out from 115 mph fast balls

Worked perfectly. Received on time. Absolutely no complaints!

Game doesn't not work at all and is completely scratched up

thanks for helping me relive my childhood