Paul Frew
The Bigs 2 Baseball
July 30th 2009 06:28
- Paul Frew
Baseball isn’t huge in Australia like it is in the US or Japan – in fact the only interaction Aussies would have had with the sport is at the Olympics, The Simpson’s episode where Homer played with all the baseball greats and the film with the guys from South Park Baseketball. We know the basics – a pitcher throws the ball and the guy with the bat hits it. Then you run around the bases to score runs.
Fortunately that’s all you need to know to enjoy The Bigs 2. The Bigs 2 is like the NBA Jam of baseball – it’s all about action and over the top fun. During a game you’ll see lightening strike when a fielder scores a legendary catch, fireworks litter the air when you hit a home run and smash the stadium logo and you can introduce the ball to a fielder’s face by aiming for them resulting.
For a game that is all about fun, over-the-top action the game takes some time to get used to. Pitching is fairly straight forward – you’ll see a square next to the batter with a portion of it shaded red which represents where you don’t want to pitch to as it’s the area where the batter is most dangerous. Some batters will have the majority of the square red while others will only have a corner or eighth of the square. Y, X, B, A all throw different types of pitches – you need to aim where you want to pitch the ball with the right stick then hold down the button and release it in line with the bar next to the pitcher. The bar is similar to every other sports game out there – release too early and the batter will predict what you’re throwing and hit it and release too late and it could end with a ball.
Batting is a little tougher to get the hang of – you aim with the right stick then hit Y, X, B, A to perform a different kind of hit. The problem is the majority of the time you don’t know where the ball is going to go and what type of shot you should play. The first few times I played through the game I only scored a couple of home runs and the rest were fouls or the ball landed in the fielder’s glove. It does get easier the more time you put into it but it would have been nice if the batting was as easy to pick up as the pitching.
There are several modes to get practice in – you can play a training game, jump straight into a match or go through the Become a Legend mode where you create a baller from scratch that will get drafted into the league and become a legend like Babe Ruth (who is the only baseball legend we know thanks to John Goodman). There are also some minigames and online games so there are plenty of modes to explore.
Australia missed out on MLB 09 The Show and Major League Baseball 2K9 so if you’re a baseball fan then The Bigs 2 might not exactly be the baseball sim you’re looking for but it’s something you’ll get a lot of enjoyment out of while you drink beer, eat hotdogs and spit tobacco. For everyone else we recommend checking out the demo first on Xbox Live before heading out to the shops.
Recommended
The Bigs 2 is available on Xbox 360 now and will come to the Nintendo Wii on August 1.
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