When fielding you’ll see a red target indicator appear on the field where the ball will land. Your job is to get to that spot and click the mouse button to bring up your glove and make the play. Once you have the ball you can throw it to a base by pressing the corresponding number key for that base. Playing the outfield can be a bit challenging because you won’t be able to see the ball in flight and the camera is set in a third person view behind your back. If the ball is headed to your side or behind you, you won’t see the ball indicator unless you spin around looking for it. The time wasted scanning for the ball’s landing zone often results in the ball making its way out to the wall with you madly trying to catch up to it.

While the game’s play issues can make it frustrating at times, especially to new players, keep in mind that I played a beta version of the game and that any or all of these issues may be addressed before the game’s release.

Finding a game is easy enough to do. You select the skill level and look for games with openings – and you can join a game before it starts or jump into one in progress. If there aren’t eighteen people ready to play the game can fill out the remaining roster slots with AI players. In a nice touch, only human controlled players will bat, ensuring that you won’t have to wait for a few innings for your next at bat while the computer has all the fun.

The game has a few issues to address in terms of lag, but it’s still in beta and still free to play so this is forgivable. The game’s biggest challenge is that there’s a lot of standing or sitting around and doing nothing in a real game of baseball and this may not sit well with gamers used to controlling the action all of the time. If you’re a baseball fan then the game is certainly worth a download and some time spent checking it out.

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