Backyard Baseball 2007

Rating ESRB: Everyone Genre sports Publisher Atari External Links Official Backyard Baseball Website

Backyard Baseball 2007 is the kind of game that is designed specifically for children; however, to actually purchase such an awful game for a child could potentially get you locked away for child abuse. Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh, but Backyard Baseball is largely an embarrassment for everyone involved.

My main problem is that Backyard Baseball uses its guise as a children's game as an excuse for lazy game design. The core aspects of a good baseball game are all here, but ingenuity, innovation, and overall enjoyment are completely absent! The game is very simple: when the player is at bat, he/she times the swing to hit the ball when it comes close. The player can pick between a few different "swings", including the power swing. I simply used this every time and scored a home run.

Fielding in the game is fairly intuitive; nothing here will really throw the player for a loop as it plays pretty much like any other baseball game out there. Pitching is a bit more original, however, with certain characters being able to throw special pitches that can nearly guarantee a thrown strike. It's pretty fun when this ability is within your hands, but is frustrating when the computer takes advantage of it.

The graphics are very stylistic; that is, if having no discernible style can be considered "stylistic." The graphics are cute, cartoony, and could have probably been run on a much older gaming system. I know it's meant for kids, but does that mean the game has to look so drab?

Sound-wise, the game's audio isn't that offensive. Some of the dialogue and what the kids say can be pretty cute for a few minutes until their commentary starts looping and driving the listener up the wall. Even worse is the announcer, who sounds like my big Uncle Rudy. Uncle Rudy would always come to us and say, "Hey little boys, would you like to play a game with me?" You were never really clear about Uncle Rudy's intentions, nor am I specifically certain that the announcer in this game has picked his profession merely for his love of baseball.

In the game's defense, I must say that the play is pretty intuitive. I never had any problem figuring out any of the controls, and was able to delve right into season mode. They even give the option of, quite shoddily, designing your own character - by which I mean picking his hair and face, which the player won't even see, as the character model rotates so slowly that most will grow impatient before and just proceed with the game. There's also a pick-up game if the player just wants to play a friendly game of baseball with a friend or against the computer. The game's environments (such as a junkyard, a farm, or, as its namesake goes, a backyard) are admittedly quite fun and imaginative, and are definitely one of the major highlights of the game.

Backyard Baseball 2007 is reasonably fun when first starting play, but after you realize that there is no depth to the gameplay, you may start looking elsewhere. Playing the game is similar to eating a plain donut with no filling inside; sure, it's tasty, but where's the adventure? The excitement? Backyard Baseball craves not these things.