Midway’s NFL Blitz is one of the most memorable sports franchises around. While Madden and
the 2K games were busy trying to one-up the other in terms of realism, NFL Blitz took
the opposite approach and focused on making an arcade-style football game with tons of
violence and humor, but Blitz wasn’t the only sports game Midway made. No, they also
had NHL Hitz, Redcard and their own baseball game, and it’s just as over-the-top as you
might expect. This is MLB Slugfest 20-03 for the Xbox.
The best way to describe this game is that if baseball was stripped of all honor and
dignity and was then replaced with hilarious hits and super-human players¸ this is what
you’d come up with. The game does have every MLB team, although the Nationals were still
the Expos for a few more years after this came out. Teams are also ranked in a very
extreme way, with the Pirates, as bad as they’ve been over the last 20 years, having about
a quarter of the attributes of the Yankees or Diamondbacks.
Although this is technically a baseball game, you really have to throw everything out the
window when it comes to actually getting hits or making outs. Now, I’ve been playing a
lot of baseballs sims lately, and I’m used to working the count and getting a good pitch
to hit. You can’t do that here at all. Definitely turn down the difficulty to begin with, or
you’re going to get shelled like me. But anyway, as a hitter, you have access to a
power or contact swing, as well as a bunt, and as a pitcher you have four pitches and
the option to bean the batter. There’s never a pitch thrown that the batter can’t hit,
and this definitely fits with the arcade style. It does make it a little frustrating though,
especially when you’re used to painting the corners.
Of course, the draw of this game is that you can punch other players in the face, hit them
so hard with the ball that they have to crawl to the base, have players catch their feet
on fire, or get flipped through the air by a base-runner. Over the years, I’ve probably
spent about half my time just punching the other team with the ball. By the way, that’s
actually how you tag runners, and they can knock you the hell out to jar the ball loose.
And that’s really the reason why I love this game so much. No, it doesn’t have the
best controls, or the most engaging gameplay, but it’s funny. It’s really hard to play
this game and not laugh, especially if you enter codes and play with animal head players.
This humor is most evident in the banter between the broadcasters. Every line the two guys
say is just pure gold, from explaining how to stop someone from choking to why Abraham
Lincoln would be a better pitcher than the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s some of the
best writing and delivery I’ve heard in a video game. The animations of the players
can also lead to some laughs, like when the second baseman covers his eyes to avoid seeing
his pitcher get the crap kicked out of him by the batter following a beaning. In addition,
the “extras” section even has some really funny commentary from the makers of the game.
Baseball is a fantastic sport, and my personal favorite, but it’s sometimes fun to just
forget about the rules and punch everyone in the kidneys. This is a great choice to
mess around with if you have some company over.
