Slugger for the iPhone: A Freakin’ Homerun

Once upon a time I was baseball fanatic. Hailing from the hilly terain of beautiful San Francisco I inhaled the sweaty musk of los Gigantes with pride. And I made a mark on the mound chucking side-arm sliders for my high school baseball team, the Lowell Cardinals (whoop whoop). But when I migrated 400 miles South to attend college in Los Angeles, the diamond-shaped baseball region buried deep in my soft-tissue shuddered and short-circuited. Perhaps I can fault my newfound proximity to a team I was raised to hate (the Dodgers). Or maybe the clumpy, stinky L.A. atmosphere can be held responsible. Either way, I fell off the MLB train.

It wasn’t until just recently, when I happened upon a slew baseball titles in the App store, that the smell of clean-cut grass and deodorant-less Umpires came barreling back at me like a screaming line drive. Beisbol. My former flame. I decided to give a couple of lite versions a whirl. These digital reunions,  to put it eloquently, were dick. Big, hairy dick.

In fact, I was about to give up on the sport altogether when a certain home run derby type title plunged onto the top of the App Store charts. What’s this? How could a baseball game lacking the functionality to play an actual nine inning game be so popular? Me no get it.

Then it went on sale. At $.99 I had to take a bite.

The result: Com2Us’ Slugger for the iPhone is my glorious albeit admittedly geeky return to America’s hot-dog-eating, beer-slurping, terrorist-stomping national pastime.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of Home Run derby, you should immediately punch through the rock from which under you live. The classic mechanic works like this: hit as many home runs as you can within the span of 10 outs. An out is anything other than a home run.

Slugger is an arcade-style home run derby challenge with a surprising amount of depth. You’ve got standard Arcade and Classic modes (the only difference being that arcade mode rewards you for hits), a training mode with customizable delivery rotation, pitch speed and type and the coup de grace of this tiny wonder: head-to-head online competition.

With a plethora of player statistics (online ranking, win/loss totals, avg. HR distance, longest HR streak, etc.) repeated play is extremely gratifying. In my case,  maintaining a respectable win/loss ratio has become an obsession.

In online play, you choose your difficulty specific channel (or opt for a non-discerning one) and are immediately paired up with a comparably ranked challenger. The set-up is lightning fast over 3G and WiFi, and the gameplay is a blast. A small window displays your challenger’s game in the upper-right hand portion of the screen, and it’s a race to fill your score bar. After a match which lasts anywhere from 2-5 minutes, you can immediately request another, and you can even friend your opponent for later play.

I might as well let on now that online play alone is worth the purchase. But why don’t you humor me and read on for the other stellar stud in this baseball gem; upgradables. In both on and off-line play, a variety of pitches will come at you. Other than the standard smorgasboard of curves, sliders and knuckleballs, there are power-up pitches, sabotage pitches, and of course gold balls. Should you hit one of these golden nuggets out of the park, you’ll gain gold points, Slugger’s currency equivalent. With these gold points you can browse a marketplace of character upgrades. Helmets, uniforms, bats, batting gloves, even glasses and facial hair are all available to stat boost and customize your character’s look. Ish is bomb dot com.

Hokay, so you’ll note that I haven’t even mentioned the controls, graphics or sound design at this point. The truth of the matter is, they are all PERFECTLY executed. The graphics are Playstation caliber, the sounds of jeering fans, cracking bats and baseball-damaged scorboards are extremely satisfying and the controls are simple and effective. You use the accelerometer to line up the bat’s sweet spot with the pitch’s anticipated destination, and tap anywhere on screen to swing.

At the risk of turning this review into a full-fledged feature, I’ll compact my criticism into easily digestable bullets:

• Not all of the upgradables offer stat boosts, which begs the question why would you purchase them other than to customize your look?
• On that note, because the higher-costing items are generally better stat-augmenters, appearance customization is consequently minimal.
• I’d like to see an expanded marketplace with more emphasis on appearance customization and not just tiered upgrades. For instance, why do you have to pay to change your skin tone at the outset?
• More multiplayer game modes, please?

That about wraps up this review. I definitely recommend a purchase here, for baseball enthusiasts, former baseball enthusiasts, and sports-shy arcade fans alike. And if you ever come across SamSles in online play, watch the eff out. I can swing a mighty digital bat bitches. Crrrrraaaaacccck!