The oft-delayed World Series Baseball 2K2 has finally hit retail shelves. Sure, it's five months late, but its a small price to pay to have Visual Concepts at the helm. Last year's World Series suffered from atrocious computer controlled fielding, shoddy stat tracking, a lack of gameplay modes, and a countless number of glitches. Visual Concepts promised to get the series back on track. They certainly had the development time. Did they deliver?

There are two major changes to the gameplay this year. The first of which is the reconstructed pitching and batting interfaces. Gone is the trigger sensitive swinging that frustrated batters in WSB 2K1, replaced with a much simpler one-touch swing like that of the Triple Play series. The batter follows the on-screen baseball, controller by the pitcher, with a circular cursor. Depending on the hitter's power and consistency, the size of the batting cursor varies. The realism really comes into play with the hot and cold zones that are displayed on-screen. Pitching around a player's "hot-zone" is key to keeping the ball in the park when facing power hitters like Bonds and Gonzalez. You may have the cursor lined up right on the ball before the pitch, but curveballs and sliders will keep you honest.

This, in my opinion, is the best batting interface of any baseball game I've ever played. The little problems start to come into play when pitching. This year, pitchers can line the ball up to the exact spot they want to throw the ball before the actual pitch, as opposed to last year where there wasn't a moving onscreen ball. The problem is that pitchers are too accurate, as opposed to the pitching game in 2K1 where pushing the analogue stick too hard would cause the ball to fly way outside the strike zone.

The second problem is with the speed of the pitches. Fastballs travel a lot slower than they should, let alone the changeups that hang in the air forever. Taking a cut at a Randy Johnson fastball just doesn't feel like it should. In fact, throwing a "fastball" is almost rendered obsolete by the pitching speed. On the positive side, you can control the velocity of the pitches by varying pressure on the pitch button. It's not quite analog, but tapping the button and holding it down will result in different speeds. The full-control pitching is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it helps the batting out greatly. On the other hand, it makes pitchers a tad too accurate. As a whole, pitching is fairly enjoyable, but there are things that need to be addressed if the series is continued.

The second major gameplay improvement is the manual fielding. Whether you've played World Series 2K1 or not, I'm sure you know about the headache inducing auto-fielding that resulted in thrown DC pads around the country. I threw a controller or two myself after my outfielders mysteriously misjudged easy pop-ups. Manual fielding is a great improvement and makes the player feel like their actually playing the game. If you make a diving catch in the bottom of the ninth, or let a flyball drop that scored the winning run, at least now you feel like you won or lost the game- a major plus. Whew, the ball definitely does jump off the bat. Grabbing a line-drive can be quite difficult, or sometimes downright impossible. It takes a long time to get used to, but once you're reflexes are fast enough, fielding is above average. Controlling the base you throw to is now done with each of the face buttons representing a base. Problems aside, manual fielding considerably improves the gameplay.

One thing I can't excuse is the regression in the graphics department. The player models can't hold a candle to last year's. Likewise, the player's face models aren't up to snuff with last year World Series in detail. The detail that went into all of the stadiums is fantastic, but overall, WSB 2K2 isn't as polished as 2K1. Even the batting stances have relapsed compared to last year's, which had every batter's stance nailed down to the tee. Ugly glitches also rear their head. I've seen at least four foul balls called homeruns in under thirty games. With so much development time, I expected better from Visual Concepts.

The online play, which could have been outstanding, is a complete mess. For some reason beyond me, the pitching and batting cursors have vanished from online games. What you are left with is pitching relying on pitch selection, and batting relying completely on timing. That's right; you have no control over either. When that's all stripped away, what the player is left with is a pitching and batting system relying mostly on the ratings of the players. Add in a lag time of about a second to a second and a half, and you have a lot of problems. It's been rumored that VC will add the cursors and real-time voice chat in a few weeks, but I wouldn't hold my breath. If Sega drastically fixes the servers, it could be a lot of fun.

Instead of the traditional two-man booth, VC opted to go with a single announcer. After a few hours of play, the repetitiveness really shows. NFL 2K quality it is not. The announcer is often late on calls, or just plain calls them wrong (foul balls proclaimed as homers). The rest of the sound is done very well. The crowd effects are perfect- fans cheer for players, boo at strikeouts, and you even hear the occasional "peanuts here." After the first ten games, you'll probably be muting the announcer and cranking up the sound effects. It seems the NFL 2K series' announce team is on a plateau that can't yet be reached.

In the sheer amount of modes of play, WSB 2K2 has improved greatly. There's now a franchise mode where you take the role of manager and play through multiple seasons. Players contracts run out, young prospects can be signed, and stats are tracked from year to year (in 13 categories). This year they've even added All-Star voting. A Home Run Derby has also been thrown into the mix. After all, chicks dig the long ball. The create-a-player mode, of course, is back as well.

World Series Baseball 2K2 isn't the savior of baseball games that everyone was hoping for. It's a solid first time effort for Visual Concepts with several problems. The batting interface is one of the best around, but pitching suffers from slow pitch speed. Stat-tracking is much improved, yet far from perfect. It's rich on game modes, while online play so far is a disaster. Seemingly for every positive, there are little negatives that drag WSB 2K2 down. At the end of the day, it's one of the better console baseball games in a market that is far from the standards set by the other major sports' games. Baseball games need a complete revamping as a whole. WSB 2K2 takes some steps forward, and then some backward. At only forty bucks, it's a good pickup for baseball fans willing to overlook some flaws.