High Heat's graphics are clean, pretty, and do the game justice. There's nothing flashy or much of anything that will make you go 'Wow,' but the most interesting thing about the graphics is the true to life detail given to many aspects of the game. Aside from just the accuracy of the team lineups, the stadiums, pitches, and even batting stances are all in there. The only thing I'd say I found lacking was the amount of detail in the player faces. While other games seem to be getting more and more realistic in this aspect, High Heat 2004 continues to suffer from more or less generic faces. This isn't a new problem - it was also an issue last year with High Heat 2003. Also the crowd, while diverse, seems to be made out of cardboard cutouts. This wouldn't be a problem except that you can see this pretty blatantly when the camera does something like pan around a ball during a homerun. Make them turn or something; I know I don't just keep sitting forward when a homer goes flying over my head.
I'd imagine the idea behind the sound effects in a baseball game would be to make it sound as much like a baseball game as possible. I can't think of much more they could have done - High Heat 2004 covers all the bases (snicker). The sounds on the field seem about right. You have your guy in the stands trying to sell hotdogs. There's the occasional flourish of baseball game music.
One thing that anyone who's played a lot of baseball video games would wonder about is the announcers. They can either have five or six things to say and get extremely irritating, or they can really shine as their commentary appropriately reflects what's happening on the field without saying the same thing 20 times in a row. It's always a little creepy when I get some slick idea, it doesn't work, and the commentators point out exactly what I was thinking. Suffice it to say, High Heat 2004 falls into the latter category, with announcers who never get irritating. Well, except when they show that replay of me making an error.
