9 Innings Pro Baseball 2009
Com2uS Corp.
21 MB
$0.99 (On Sale)
9 Innings Pro Baseball 2009 is one of the best if not the best baseball simulators available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. With cell-shaded graphics, comes a relaxed arcade felt game, since the
MLB won't let the game use its rosters and teams, your favorite
player or team won’t be available. However, 9 Innings makes up the
difference with added features such as missions, upgradable managers to
strengthen your team, home run derby, tournament mode, and the full length 126
game season. Not bad for a game on the palm of your hand. The game play is good and offers many buttons to control certain actions. There are a few glitches I’d like to see fixed, but as far as batting, pitching, and fielding, it’s easy to control. The
AI is tough enough to punish you if you decide to throw a fastball up
the middle of the plate. I chose the home run derby which involves you simply hitting the ball out of the stadium) and started
to enjoy the game, just hitting homers. Good news about this approach
is the developer, Com2uS Corp, threw in a points system to help in
upgrading your managers (instead of players?) in order to
beef up your team in certain categories. 
So if you stink at the game,
go hit some out of the park and practice that swing, and earn points at
the same time. Pitching in the game is very well done. Choose your style of pitch, place it (with
the D-Pad), tap OK once to lock it in, and again when the red ring
lines up to the white ring for the best pitch. Miss it and your
pitcher might lob over a home run pitch. So it’s a gamble you take to
bring the heat or your pitcher gets lit up. Fielding is good too, for fly-outs, they are automatic outs, the
fielder is there to make the catch. Grounders are a different story.
When fielded, tap the D-Pad to throw to the right base. Also, thankfully if you are interrupted, exit out and the game saves where you left off. The depth of this game is just amazing and right from the opening video you know it will be amazing. All the different controls are too much to go into but I can assure you you will not be disappointed if a baseball game is what you are looking for.
While the game has a great feel and beautiful game play there are still a few things that need to be done. There is no separate options to turn off the music and sound effects, making the game either very boring (with no bat sounds of pitching) or very annoying (the catchy baseball music in the background is nice at first but gets old). On batting there is no way to reset your batter so if you accidentally tap the bat button before the ball is coming you cannot swing again even though your batter has time to reset. And the big one is that there is no multiplayer. Baseball games are fun to play against and AI but it is really meant to play with others and the option to play against a friend would be amazing.
The game offers different point systems and a ton of depth. The home run derby mode should be enough to urge you to get the app and don't forget about the massive season mode. The graphics in 9 Innings are excellent and the detail is understandably made up with the amount of game play. If you are looking for a beautiful 3D baseball sim then stay away from this one. The graphics get the job done and bring the right feel to the style of the game. With all the factors brought into consideration (such as the depth of the game, the numerous game modes and point system) 9 Innings Pro Baseball has hit a home run in the App Store!
8/10 - For a no multiplayer and minor problems.
