Hardball 4 isn't a real baseball game.

	Those of you saying to yourselves, "Gee, he's actually paid money to make these brilliant observations" should be ashamed of your cynical attitudes. I'm obviously aware that the difference between computer baseball and real baseball is that right now, your chances of seeing authentic major leaguers play a full 1995 season are a hell of a lot better on your computer than at your nearest stadium. My point is that like virtually every other baseball game I've seen for the computer recently, Hardball 4 isn't a completely accurate simulation of the sport.

	There's certainly nothing wrong with this. The review that this article is attached to is glowing, and I meant all the things that I said. Accolade has done a marvelous job with Hardball 4. Its biggest asset is its look. The designers filmed a team of minor leaguers playing a real game and used that footage as a base for its graphics package, and the players look fantastic.

	That same care for detail also shows in the game's package of options. If you want to keep it simple, you can dive right in by picking two teams and play an exhibition game, or you can practice your pitching, batting, and home runs. Setting up your own league is a cinch. You can either buy a real team and manage it, or you can set up a draft and create your own all-star team. You have three choices for the length of your season, which is followed by the playoffs, and, if you're good enough, the World Series.

	Real major leaguers, complete with their statistics from the 1994 season, come with the CD version and are available through an expansion pack for the floppy version. When it comes to actual gameplay, you can control the players yourself, or you can select "manage only" and simply make decisions while the computer plays the game. In what I felt was an extremely helpful touch, you can set the computer on "autofielding" if you're interested in playing yourself in the arcade mode. Fielding has always been the hardest thing for me to master when I play computer baseball games, and this option helped me overcome that coordination problem.

	As a computer gameplayer, I think Hardball 4 is great. As a baseball fan, I have some problems with it, the biggest being its overwhelming bias toward offense. Even with the dilution of pitching talent by expansion, modern baseball isn't a slugfest. A good-hitting team averages in the neighborhood of five runs a game, while the offensively challenged have trouble breaking four runs a game.

	That's not the case with Hardball 4. In my first game (strictly as a manager), I sent Jimmy Key, one of the best left-handers in the American League in 1994, out for the Yankees against the Toronto Blue Jays. Key's appearance was a brief one, and he was followed by a parade of hopeless hurlers as I got tattooed, 18-4.

	I was hoping this was simply the equivalent of a software seizure, but that wasn't the case at all. I gained revenge on the Blue Jays in the next game, scoring 10 runs in the bottom of the ninth to pull out a 14-12 victory. Game three was a 12-8 Toronto victory, and I started to sense I was onto a trend. I kept playing, but regardless of what mode I was in – managing only or controlling all the players – the game was a pretty steady stream of two- or three-run homers.

	Mind you, I do understand why this happens. If Accolade's design team wanted to, I'm sure they could create an extremely accurate baseball game. Of course, beefing up the artificial intelligence to the point where it duplicates a real baseball game wouldn't leave much room for graphics. The best example of this is an APBA computer baseball game I have at home. This game is driven entirely by stats – there are running ratings, fielding ratings, throwing ratings, platoon ratings – it's everything a baseball junkie could ask for. And it doesn't have any graphics at all.

	I have a great mental image of the design team at any major game company pitching a game like APBA to its marketing department in these days of 3-D rendering and SVGA graphics. They would laugh and say that it wouldn't sell, and they would be absolutely right.

	If you're after great-looking game that has a lot of fun options, Hardball 4 is worth the money. If you want to pretend you're a real manager, dig out your old board game, or hit the lottery and buy your own team.