:: PITCHING PUZZLES
:: BASE HITEyes Wide Games has launched their one-touch baseball game,Watch This Homerun, for the Apple Watch.
Batting Average, by Pixolini, is designed to help you manage your statistics. Every time you go to bat, you can use your Apple Watch to track yourswings, strikes, and hits.
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Eyes Wide Games'Watch This Homerunis purportedly the first sports game coming to the Apple Watch, where you'll be up to bat as the pitcher tries to out-manuever you with fastballs, curveballs, and changeups. Using one-touch controls you can try to hit as many homeruns as possible. The game has a progression-based League system meant to make you really feel like you're a part of the team. You'll be able to track your achievements and progress on the leader boards, as well as compare your stats with friends to find out who the best batter is.
“We’ve seen where Apple Watch is going, and it’s clear that giving sports fans and gamers fast and easy ways to plug into their favorite pastimes anytime will be a defining feature of the platform,” said Eyes Wide Games CEO Stephen Griffin, in a press release. “With Watch This Homerun, we’re distilling the complete baseball experience down to its greatest hits in a form players can enjoy in just 10-15 seconds on the go.”
You'll be able to get ahold of Watch This Homerun later this month for the Apple Watch.
:: STATS AND DREAM HEAVY
:: SIMPLE HITTING :: RULED AN ERROR :: Read Review »Gamevil USA has released a new update for MLB Perfect Inning that's packed with new features. Now you can play against anyone around the world in the head-to-head style gameplay and earn special edition players as rewards.
Want to shake things up for your team? Now you will be able to trade up to 3-5 players at a time on the trading block. Test your manager skills as you accept offers or negotiate for better deals. Will your new team top the leaderboards? With the updated 2014 rosters and stats, and new player models and motion capture, you'll be able to craft the team of your dreams.
According to the Gamevil site: "To celebrate the update, for 24 hours right between 8/30 18:00 ~ 8/31 18:00 (PDT), all users that log in will receive 1 draft pick that 100% guarantees a SIGNATURE player!"
You can check out MLB Perfect Inning for free on the App Store.
:: Glu has announced that later this week they plan to launch Tap Sports Baseball. The game incorporates real players and baseball strategy in a turn-based, one-touch control system.
Tap Sports Baseball lets you play against your friends in multiple games on Facebook simultaneously. You can even develop your dream team with draft picks, signing free agents, and strategically upgrading your team!
Tap Sports Baseball will be coming to the App Store soon, so keep an eye out.
:: RULED AN ERROR :: Read Review »MLB Perfect Inning, the baseball simulation game from Gamevil, has received a new update that adds in some new content and bug fixes.
Most notably, the update brings new voice-over commentary from renown sportscaster Joe Buck. It also adds new motion captures.
We had an opportunity to review this game a short while ago; the updated version is available for free (with optional in-app purchases) on the App Store.
:: RULED AN ERROR
The genesis of Bush League came about when Hayhurst noticed that "There's no good baseball game out there that kind of trolls baseball. You have all these scandals every year, but you never to seem to have a game that has all these players and all the drama they get into. And it's such a big thing right now in Major League Baseball to get caught using steroids, right? I thought, why can't we just make a game where you have to use steroids to win, and just troll the entire industry? I'm kind of like a black sheep of the baseball world anyways, and I always have kind of shown the other side of it, I thought, this is a great premise for a video game. Let's make Candy Crush with steroids."
The hook to Bush League is in the way that it tries to parody baseball. Famous players and other figures around the sport both past and present are the opponents that populate the game, and their personalities and dialogue make light of things that, say, MLB: The Show or RBI Baseball 14 would never touch.
Hayhurst's unafraid to make fun of situations that he was involved in. There's one character, Purcey Tweeps, who parodies David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays. Hayhurst criticized Price's performance after a playoff game he lost, and Price insulted Hayhurst's playing career and said "SAVE IT NERDS.". Purcey in the game makes reference to social media and to the nerds comment. Everything is a bit crude and over-the-top, but meant to, as Hayhurst says, "troll baseball" and "[service] that idea that baseball takes itself too seriously and needs a good mocking every now and then just to keep things even."
While Hayhurst financed the development of the game and his name is on it, he didn't just slap his name on it - he played an active role in development. "I was in charge of the art direction, the music direction... all the powers, I had to nest all the AI development, I had to decide the way it was going to look, the way it was going to feel, I had a say in all of that. At times I frustrated the guy doing the code, but it was a learning experience. And so there were things that I learned taking a shot at making a game that I never would have learned had I pursued a degree." Hayhurst says he realized his strengths were "the writing, and designing the characters and how the game should feel, and my coder had his strengths, which was taking all these wild ideas I had, parsing them down, teaching me the ropes, and making them work in the actual game.
Hayhurst doesn't want Bush League to be a static product either: he wants to, over time, update the game to incorporate other notorious events and scandals as characters and powers. He says he would love to tackle other sports in a similar way.
But given that he's created this media career for himself, is Hayhurst afraid of the blowback that could come from this parody of the sport and its players that he's created? He says "I don't think of the church of baseball as some holy sacrament that everyone has to be reverential to, especially guys like me that didn't have long careers. This kind of stuff deserves to get picked on a little bit, because it's quite ridiculous when you think about it. I have always done that. And I understand because I'm in the sports entertainment field, I'm criticizing the sports entertainment field. I'm not criticizing these individual players, I'm criticizing the Franken-player that we've made out of them by knowing very little about who they are and taking what we know publicly and hyping it up, and turning it into something it isn't. That is what I've always done, and that's what got me on TBS and ultimately keep it from it at some point, but that's who I am, and that's the style that I like to work in."
Thanks to Dirk Hayhurst for his time. Bush League is available now.
:: SOLID CONTRACT
