MLB Dugout Heroes
As a self-professed baseball aficionado, when a new Major League game is released, it receives a bitmore critical attention than other sports (it should be noted that before joining the ranks of video-game journalism, there was a rather lengthy stint working in mid-sized newspapers – including closeapproximately eight years as a sports editor). There is something so fundamentally simple and complexabout the sport that it is compelling.The pitcher selects a pitch, tries to hit a location. The batter challenges the pitch and if successful movesonto the basepaths. The outfielders have to watch the runner, determine the best strategic location toreturn the ball. It’s one-on-one challenges, overall strategic play within the teamwork concept, and can turnon an errant hop.Everything but the last holds true in MLB Dugout Heroes, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online gamefrom GamesCampus and Wisecat. Ok, the free-to-play genre has often meant shallow and repetitiousgameplay, and while baseball is somewhat repetitious, it is also situational, which means a variety of options are available with almost every pitch thrown.But the developers behind this game had simplified it a lot. It’s one human player against another, with aMajor League roster (featuring the real players, though some of the character renderings are not close,but not to worry – and this will be explained in a bit), but you don’t have to position fielders to make theplay, the AI does that; all you do is pitch and determine what base to throw to if the ball is hit successful, or hit and decide if you want to go for extra bases or steal a base. It’s actually a very fundamental game onseveral levels.You pick a team as your game team, then go into a lobby that is separated by your team ranking (yes, asyou play you accrue experience points and raise from rank 1 to 2, et cetera), get into a game that can runthree or five innings (other options include extending the game if there is a tie at the end of thepre-determined game length) and play ball.It’s actually all very easy to jump into and play. You can call a time-out to substitute players – who will wear down through successive games, and pitcher’s arms will become wearing making you keep an eye onyour rotation and innings pitched by your relievers … you know, just like the real game.Teams don’t actually play in their home stadiums, and the default seems to be AT&T park (Ok, the parkitself is nice, but if you hit a long ball and see the water beyond the outfield fence, there are palm treessticking up out of it … if that is indeed supposed to be water). There are only three parks used for the all of the games.Batting is handled through the mouse. You can alternate between the normal swing, or a power swing,and you can bunt. You then use the mouse to align the bat with the pitch location (you have to move thebat once the pitch is on the way and try to make that contact point) and use the mouse buttons to swingthe bat at the ball. Once on the basepaths, the keyboard comes into play. Q and E are the ways toadvance or retreat runners when the ball is in play, and stealing is a keyboard driven combination.For the defense, the mouse is used for pitching and the keyboard for the location on throws for hit balls.You use the mouse, as the pitcher, to select the pitch and its location, and then use the mouse buttons for the pitching meter. The first meter (all benchmarked with mouse input) is the power, while the second isaccuracy. If the ball is hit, fielders automatically move on it (they can make diving stabs) and you use theWASD keys to determine what base to throw to. The Q and E keys are used for cutting off the throws.
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i think this game is made for me