What I Think Of: R.B.I. Baseball '14

These days, gamers are inundated with relaunches, reboots, remakes, and re-everythings, with mixed results. For the record: I do want to say the reboot of Killer Instinct is pretty bad-ass.

When MLB announced there was going to be a licensed RBI Baseball "reboot", we gamers got excited. You don't have to be a "nerd" or "geek" to understand the importance of RBI. Even if you aren't into video games you still have been around this game, first or second hand. The sounds, the music, the arcade feel, RBI Baseball is an absolute classic.

So how does '14 stand up? ....well....here's what I think of RBI Baseball '14.

The game gives a great first impression. When you first fire up the game, you hear the original RBI theme song. Not overpowering, but enough for you to go "Ahh" and smile.

That is IF you can fire up the game. I downloaded it onto my 360 the day it came out and I clicked on it a few times where I got the error message "Can't launch this title"....ok....why? After a few times of hammering on the 'A' button I got it to go, but it was not a good omen.

You get into the game (finally) and it's a pretty straight-forward slew of options. You can play a single game, a season (full or shortened options), or go through a post season. There are also leaderboards if you want to see how you stack up in stats such as wins, home runs, RBI, overall batting average, etc. Being a bit of a sports stats nerd, I like that it keeps those universal stats.

Probably outta here!

Those are the only stats the game tracks though. There is no individual player stat-tracking throughout a season. Kind of a bummer but not really that big of a deal in an arcade-y baseball experience. The original RBI didn't have that either.

That seems to be the theme here though: The original RBI didn't have it so don't expect it here. No stat tracking and no online play here. That last one seems like a REAL missed opportunity. I know this one is trying to push the "same couch" idea of multiplayer, but at the same time you have to know your audience and nowadays people just expect online play, especially in their sports games.

What you DO get though is the MLB licence, so you will have the real teams, the real dimensions of each ballpark (they aren't exact recreations) and the real uniforms (Home, Away, Alternate, and retro ones you unlock by completing challenges).

Worst feeling as the batter.

The game plays as you remember it: the 'A' and 'X' buttons (on 360, adjust accordingly for PS3) pretty much do everything, along with directional input. No swing sticks, no rotating right stick for a curveball, it's simple and easy to pick up where you left off years ago.

As far as how the game looks, I'm torn. When the camera is far away it looks....ok. When it gets close, like during the hitting part or the home run vignette, it looks downright bad. I understand this is not Battlefield 4 or anything, but this is a graphically unimpressive game.

I home run'd so hard the world caught fire!

I would recommend putting the fielding mode to "Assist" so the CPU helps a little. After playing so many baseball games in my life, I have become used to a ball indicator during a pop up, and when I played RBI back in the day, I was used to the outfielders helping me out and the game/camera helping me project where the ball was going to land. I can't tell you how many times I missed pop ups in this version due to (A) A bad outfield camera (B) No indicator of where my guy is (C) No way to judge where the ball was going to land.

'14 does seem to at least get the feel and flow of a game right. Games go by fast, walks are few and far between, and a "3 up, 3 down" inning is pretty common.

Now here comes my biggest concern with '14. This can be chalked up to a number of things but the basis is this: This game is buggy as hell.

I have played a handful of games and here is my list:

- Runners stuck in "limbo" because they can't run forward or backward so I just get tagged and called out.

- 2 or 3 full on crashes and the "Can't launch title" error message.

- Auto-saving not actually saving. I had completed a 3 games series as the Cubs against the Pirates and after game 3, the game froze and when I re-launched it, I was back to game 2. Maybe it's cause the game hates it when the Cubs actually win.

- The game is $20

Aim for the head!

 Ok, so that last one isn't really a bug per say, but it is worth mentioning. You can get games like MLB Power Pros and MLB Bobblehead Pros and have a better experience for roughly the same price. It is also worth mentioning that this is the only way Xbox owners will play baseball this year.

The biggest thing against '14 is that it feels like it's trying to please everybody and manages to please nobody. It's not fully nostalgia, and it's not fully new-age. The end result is a swing and a miss. If you feel the need to play baseball on your Xbox this year, look elsewhere or wait for a price drop. If you have a PS3, you are already playing your baseball game.