10/28/2009 8:55:03 AM

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By Shaun Conlin
Evergeek Media 

As it happens, the Wii simply can't compete with the dazzling depths and video resolution highs of modern baseball sims on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

	"Baseball Blast" 'Platform(s): Wii Publisher: 2K Sports ESRB Rating: Everyone (6+) Price: $19.99

"Baseball Blast" is a cute, cartoony, proletarian mini-game collection with a baseball theme and cookiecutter caricatures to match. It's a modestly smart buy for Wii owners, particularly those who have been looking for a good, all-ages mini-game collection. That's not to say Blast is amazing or anything, but at just $20 -- the lowest price you'll find on any new Wii titles (not withstanding said same games, aged a few weeks and then moved into one of the "2 for $10" bargain bins) -- it's a fair price.

And it's not bad.

Mind you, the lot of it is at its most engaging as a four-player party.

What's odd about "Baseball Blast," however, is that there's not very much baseball in it. Of the 20 mini-games offered, only a handful actually have you swinging a baseball bat or pitching a fastball (with a reserved, karate-chop motion, as it turns out). But there's more off-topic exercises involving bumper cars, first-person target shooting, trivia, Where's Waldo-like puzzles and general rattle-and-wank mini-games than there are baseball skills drills.

Odder still is the fact that "Baseball Blast" is Wii MotionPlus compatible, so when swing and pitch games are offered -- and you're appropriately equipped with a MotionPlus dongle, of course -- there's actually some precision to it. Not much, mind you, but certainly a step up from the basic titles that saturated the mini-game genre.

Still, "Baseball Blast" could have done better as a $20 virtual batting cage game. Instead, it only typifies the low-rent mini-game collection, though it does well to theme it with the favorite pastime and go for rock-bottom pricing out of the gate.

Final Score: 3 (out of five)

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