- Publisher: 2K Sports
- Developer: Blue Castle Games
- Also On: PS3
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Baseball
- Pros: Home Run Pinball; fun, fast paced, arcade baseball; presentation
- Cons: Commentary; braindead AI; inconsistent difficulty
Gameplay
The gameplay in The BIGS 2 has seen mostly small improvements over the first game. The pitching and batting mechanics are exactly the same as before, and the core of the game is still about earning turbo and charging up your power meter with big plays, but you have a few new tools at your disposal. Each batter now has a “wheelhouse” that is where their best power or contact comes from. As a pitcher, you’d normally want to stay away from that, but you earn more turbo for throwing strikes into the wheelhouse, so it is an interesting risk/reward scenario.
In addition to the Big Heat and Big Blast power-ups from last time, there is a new power called the Big Slam. The Big Slam throws one pitch to four batters in rapid succession, and the first three, if they get a hit, are singles to get on base while the fourth can hit a home run. Using a Big Slam wisely can blow open a close game.
The real meat of the changes came out in the field. There are now Legendary Catches that you can make by first getting your player in the right position, and then either tapping buttons as they appear onscreen or holding a button and releasing it at the right time among other micro-game-type activities. These plays only happen a few times per game, but they are impressive to watch, fun to execute, and can kill a rally in its tracks.
Features
The other main single-player mode is Become a Legend where you take a player who was once a pro but now has to start over from the Mexican leagues to get back to MLB and eventually to the Hall of Fame. In addition to playing regular games, there are also mini-games that boost your stats as well as specific scenarios that task you with doing certain things in games such as getting X number of hits or making special catches. Become a Legend is fun, sort of. It is satisfying to build up your player, but some of the specific tasks are kind of unreasonable and the mini-games (where you compete against an AI teammate who is as good if not better than you) can be dang hard. Personally, I preferred playing season mode.
Graphics
Graphically, The BIGS 2 is a pretty nice looking game. The stadiums look great, and the players are pretty good all around. Player faces are nicely detailed and look like their real counterparts even if their bodies are exaggerated and way too big. The overall theme and look definitely works well.
Sound
The sound is merely okay. The soundtrack is all crunchy heavy metal, which I don’t mind, but some people won’t care for. Commentary is pretty poor, though, as snarky comments from the announcers tend to repeat a lot and I found late in games that their statistic quotes aren’t even correct most of the time. They’ll say a player has 2-3 home runs in a game when actually it is closer to 5-6. Hits, RBIs, steals, etc. stats all get screwed up late in games by the announcer.
Bottom Line
