Plenty of gamers play sports games online, but until now online matches have always been one on one battles. Ultimate Baseball Online 2006 (UBO) changes all of that as it brings true team-based play into the world of sports games. No longer are you an omnipotent overseer taking possession at will of whichever player happens to be holding the ball – you are now an individual player on the field, just one member of a team of nine players. I recently got the chance to play the beta version of the game and hit the diamond as a lowly rookie prospect.

UBO takes an MMORPG approach to the game, allowing you to create and customize up to three different players to use in the game. When creating a player you’ll be able to select his (or hers, there are female player avatars in the game) primary position and allocate points to various stats within batting, fielding, and pitching categories. As your player gains more game experience, he’ll level up and you’ll earn points that can be used to improve his stats. Pitchers will be able to improve things like their arm strength and add new pitches to their repertoire, while fielders will want to improve hitting power or speed.

The game begins with a tutorial that covers batting, pitching, and fielding, and that gives you a free level upgrade for completing it. When batting you first select the power of your swing which has an effect on your batting target. The more power that you add to the swing, the smaller the target, so if you’re swinging for the fences you’ll need to be dead-on to connect. The mouse is used to move the batting target to select your swing location and a mouse click will start your swing. The batting tutorial is simply a series of ten straight at-bats and the game would benefit from a little more interactive instruction here. Batting is not an easy thing to pick up on the game as the visual cues to the ball’s speed and distance are minimal. When you get down to it it’s more an exercise in finding the moment when you should click the button and training yourself to click at the appropriate time rather than one of actually trying to track the ball’s speed and location.

Pitching is accomplished by selecting a pitch and then using the mouse to specify the pitch’s location. Clicking once will start a power meter, with a second click used to stop the meter’s movement and set the pitch’s speed. You then need to click again when the meter reaches the right spot in order to determine the pitch’s accuracy. With these three clicks you’ve set the pitch’s speed and accuracy the ball will be on its way to the plate. You’ll have a better degree of control over your pitches than the batters have on the swing, so a good pitcher can dominate players new to the game by doing a good job of varying the pitch speed.

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