[Gastric ReFlux]

When ITP was released last year, and for a price of $19.95, I picked up with anticipation of playing as an individual in the minor and major leagues. A lot of us here have probably dreamed that at one point or another. I played baseball through Babe Ruth, then had to become content with softball games with friends or watching the pros play it. Now here was a chance to play at those exalted levels, well at least in a digital fashion, and that made me curious to try ITP.

But after the initial try of last year, and now a more stringent exploration over the past couple of weeks, there were some serious problems with this first, but hopefully not last, incarnation of ITP.

I could blankly say the game doesn't immerse me well, but that's too general and doesn't explain why I'm finding it difficult to really get inside the park as the title would want me to be. I found myself wondering why that was, why didn't the game hook me like the way I can get hooked into a league in OOTP, and last night while working on a pitcher's career, I felt the following issues were some of the more glaring weaknesses.

Let's start with the in-game screens. Oh man, for a game that was meant to take us inside the park, this, to me, is the most glaring problem. At least in OOTP I can have a picture of the ballpark, with the names of the fielders and the runners on base. Thinking about it, I can't fathom why ITP didn't at least make use of OOTP's in-game screen. If I'm playing shortstop, I would like to see who my doubleplay partner is over at 2nd, I don't want to have to look at my team's lineup, and read the name next to an abbreviation of 2B. OOTP's in-game screen is far superior to ITP's, and that's a huge error in design, in my opinion.

I also wish that in-game it would have allowed us to look at player cards like OOTP. It would have helped us in getting to know the other players around us, who might be our future teammates in the majors, or future rivals. Right now, it's tough, it's like a string of mouse clicks with a cramped PbP screen. There is little sense of teams and rivals around me, it's harder for me to remember who hit that 3-run shot off my young pitcher, or who saved me by snagging the line drive between first and second.

So please, please, if there's a future version of ITP, at least make the in-game like OOTP's. Let me have a sense of place, and the players around me, let the PbP text at least equal to OOTP's (even for all its problems at least that's more detailed), and get the game to be more than numbers and mouse clicks. Let's get it to where we can imagine the smell of dirt and grass, and the players chasing down deep flies, and so forth. Right now, the in-game of ITP is too sterile even for many of us with more vivid imaginations. If one is a pitcher, it would be better to have some interaction with the manager before getting pulled, now you just get "player X now pitching" and "You're out of the game." It would have been so much better to get something at least like, "They're hitting you pretty hard, and you've given your all, it's time to take you out."

ITP could become a great game, I think. I'm just trying to offer some thoughts about a glaring weakness that became hugely obvious to me yesterday while working on an idea.