Game review: Flick Baseball Pro - iPhone / iPod Touch

Despite this and other similarities, neither country’s bat-and-ball sport has gained any mass popularity’s in the other’s domain.

With my other half being American and a diehard Detroit Tigers fan, I’ve always taken an interest in baseball so the sport’s transatlantic travel woes present a problem for people like me who want to follow it.

Baseball’s lack of appeal in Blighty and Europe also makes it hard to find video games based on the sport. Console titles seldom seem to get region 2 releases.

Fortunately with developers in Apple’s App Store having more of an international outlook, it’s easier to come by baseball games for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The latest one to come along is Flick Baseball Pro from Freeverse, a publisher which has a good reputation for mobile sports games, with Flick Bowling and Flick Fishing already under its belt.

Like Freeverse’s other recent release Warpgate, Flick Baseball has taken a long time to arrive. It feels like it’s been in development for years.

The game has mostly been worth the wait albeit with a couple of frustrations, again like Warpgate.

You might not be a massive baseball fan, but if you enjoy playing sports games then you should still like this.

Flick Baseball is more of an arcade-style game than a fully-fledged deep simulation.

It features 34 mostly American and Canadian teams, although not being a Major League Baseball licensed game means the clubs and players are all made up. A handy editor allows names to be changed.

Matches can be three or nine innings. Game modes range from exhibition matches right through to a full 165-game season.

Despite its name, there is not actually any flicking in Flick Baseball. Everything is touch and tilt-controlled, with no swipe gestures involved.

There are three elements to get to grips with – pitching, batting and fielding.

When pitching you first tap a virtual button to select the type of pitch. An aiming circle then appears on screen – use tilt controls to move this where you want the pitch to go, then tap the screen to throw the ball.

Pitching is pretty basic and easy to get the hang of. My one complaint is the computer batters are rather too proficient even on the easier of only the two difficulty settings in the game.

Fielding is a mixture of automatic and user-controlled.

Simple catches and picking up the ball are handled automatically. When a fielder has the ball in his hands tapping on a base directs his throw. More complicated catches see four gloves moving from the corners of the screen to the centre. You need to tap these gloves as they intersect to make the catch.

It’s nice being able to have some control over fielding without it being too complicated, although catching the ball is harder than it sounds.

Batting is the area of the game which I’ve struggled most with.

When batting you have a crosshair type thing which can be moved around using the accelerometer. Tapping the screen swings your bat as the ball approaches.

You have to line the crosshair up with the ball while tapping the screen at precisely the right moment in order to make good contact.

When I started out with the game I could barely hit any pitches, usually by getting one or other of the elements slightly wrong.

After a lot of trial and error I started hitting the ball sometimes, but I found it was either going for a homerun (which was great) or more often it was going straight up in the air before being easily caught.

It took a lot of practice and a lot of frustrating defeats before I was finally able to start scoring runs by moving players around the bases. Even with this, some batting frustrations remain.

For me the batting is too fussy and unforgiving, at least to beginners.

Something I’d like to see in a future update is a batting practice mode, somewhere I could just try hit after hit without being demoralised by losing in a game setting.

The 3D player models in Flick Baseball are not the best I’ve seen. Physique seems slightly wrong, with players having overly long and skinny legs. Players’ faces are almost non-existent, giving them a ghost-like appearance.

Fortunately the game runs so slickly and the presentation is so good in other areas that these shortcomings barely notice.

In terms of design, Flick Baseball is the most vibrant and well produced baseball game I’ve seen on iPhone and iPod Touch.

It looks the part and sounds great too, with nice commentary, crowd effects and organ music helping to create an authentic atmosphere.

Aside from my frustrations with batting, I’ve found Flick Baseball to be an accessible, playable and often entertaining game.

Even if you normally prefer cricket bowlers to baseball pitchers, this is still a good sports game to carry around with you.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 – A good all-round baseball game which should please fans of the sport as well as casual players, although it takes a lot of practice to make a perfect batter.