Introduction
World Series Baseball 2k3 has done something that the real sport couldn't do: it has rekindled my interest of the game. It is the latest of the Sega Sports series of baseball games, improving upon the previous incarnations by a substantial margin.

The franchise mode is brilliant, forcing you to deal with a limited budget, player loyalty, injuries, hiring and firing coaches, and even demoting and promoting to and from the minors. All of these features can be computer controlled or just turned off, allowing a great deal of flexibility. You can even have your coaches stress certain elements to your players. For example, your minor league coach can spend most of his time developing only the best and brightest, or you can have him spend his time improving the whole team. The manager himself can suggest trades for you and offer some advice on whom to promote. If you don’t like the way one part of your team is performing, as evidenced by the plethora of stats, fire the coach and hire a replacement. At one point, my pitching staff was playing poorly for their talent level (and I play as the Rangers so you can imagine how crappy that was). After replacing the pitching coach with another of equal talent, my pitchers began to play up to their potential, allowing my hitters to win ballgames. The depth of the franchise mode is impressive, and easily the best feature.

The gameplay itself is deep, but easy to learn. And with tons of options, you can really tweak the game to whatever is comfortable. Pitches are selected from a grid of nine, with each pitcher having his real life assortment. For a two player game, you can change the placement of the ball until the pitcher releases it, or just forego the whole pitching cursor altogether.

Batting is handled in three different ways in WSB 2k3. The first is just timing your swing with the pitch; everything else is left up to the stats of the batter and pitcher. Second is the batting cursor which is standard in most any baseball game. Third is the use of a power meter to give you control over how much strength is put into the swing. Besides this, there are two main buttons used, one for power and one just to connect with the ball. The power button gives you a smaller reticle causing you to fly out more often or just miss the ball, while the regular swing will rarely net you more than a single. You can also sacrifice bunt or attempt a drag bunt for your speedy players.

Defense is done well for the most part. After the ball is hit the computer places you in control of the nearest person to the ball. Sometimes, however, the camera is a little difficult to work with and the computer’s choice of players is counter-intuitive. I’ve had singles turn into doubles or triples simply because I couldn’t react quick enough due to the faulty camera. But for the most part, this doesn’t hinder the game. One new defensive feature is the ability to steal a home run by climbing the wall. It is difficult to do and requires perfect timing, but it really does feel great to snag one and save the day.

One noticeable drawback is stealing, as it is entirely too easy. A player that has even a decent amount of speed will rarely get caught. This is something that can be abused in the one player game if you’re not able to control yourself.

Graphics & Sound
The graphics are great in most areas, but shoddy in others. Some of the animations are a little jerky and unrefined. For example, on a close play at first the runner will attempt to lunge at the bag, but the change in animation from running to lunging is sudden and actually makes the runner seem slower. In addition to these things, I found the players’ faces to be pretty generic and bland, the only real distinguishing features were facial hair and skin tone.

Overall, however, the graphics are superb. In most areas there are several different types of animation for one action, so rarely will that heaven-sent double play look exactly the same. Aside form the action itself, the stadiums are gorgeous. When playing the franchise mode, I would intentionally skip over home games so that I could see the other stadiums. The ESPN logo is used incredibly well, as I found myself creating players named after friends just to take screenshots of them at bat with the ESPN logo.

The sound is excellent. Both the effects and the commentary are top notch, although commentary in any sports game gets redundant. Having a strong inning at home is drastically different than one on the road, as the crowd participation is noticeable (especially with surround sound). I particularly love the taunts and catcalls offered from the crowd to visiting teams. Hearing a fan recommend that A-Rod buy the Rangers a pitching staff, or commenting on Derek Jeter’s proclivity to date models was hilarious.

Innovation
There are several key additions compared to last year’s game (i.e.--you actually play defense this year), making it a worthwhile upgrade. But aside from the taunts and jeers from the crowd (which are still funny after a month of playing), WSB 2k3 doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before, it just does them a lot better.

Mojo
Basically, if you think the sport of baseball is cool, then this is your James Dean. If you don’t, then this is still a cool game to check out (it’s like watching a Star Trek movie without ever seeing the tv. show...it’s still good, it’s just not your Holy Grail). The lack of Xbox Live, however, knocks the mojo down to a mediocre 5. No online play is just uncool.

Lowdown
Pick this one up if you have even a modicum of interest in sporting games. The franchise mode puts all others, in any sport, to shame. Even without support for online matches, the replay factor of this game is astounding. Graphics, sound, gameplay...WSB 2k3 just hits all the right spots.

Gameplay: 10, Graphics/Sound: 9, Innovation: 4, Mojo: 5. Final: 8

Reviewed by Lucien | Aug 5th 2003