Cody Smith sent us his review of 2K Games’ “The Bigs 2″

Title: The Bigs 2
Publisher: 2K Games
Price: $59.99
Release Date: 07/07/09

Open The Bigs 2….the game where home runs are BOMBS and juicing is accepted and encouraged. This is not your average baseball game and that becomes clear within the first pitch you throw. The Bigs 2 is a titanic and off the wall version of Baseball in which you can make legendary catches, hit big slams that clear stadium boundaries, and make highlight reel catches beyond what is physically possible.

The heart and soul of this game is “Become a Legend” mode in which you start your career off in Mexico rehabbing from an injury that nearly took you completely out of Baseball. It is here in which you need to prove yourself worthy of a professional club signing and jump-starting your career again.

Become a Legend mode basically is comprised of two elements, the games you play, and the training that you complete. For example, I might have a three-game series in Detroit. The first game I might have to simply win, the second I might have to win but also hit a homerun and steal a base with my created player, and the third I might have to win the game so that I can steal one of their players to place in my lineup for my use. Over the course of doing this you will unlock training modes such as contact mini games, power mini games, and speed mini games. Because your attributes start at the bare minimum, every training session you complete adds one star to whatever attribute it’s associated with, and thus you will get better, faster, stronger, and make a name for yourself. As a diversion there is also a Hall of Fame area in which you take on some of the games old time greats in 5-inning games in exchange for Hall of Fame votes. These are important to get if you plan on being the best you can be!

Another great mode that’s a lot of fun to toy around in is called “Homerun Pinball”. This basically places the hitter of your choice from any of the 30 Major League clubs onto the streets of Vegas, Tokyo, or New York City. Your goal is to make sure you destroy as many things as possible while a generic pitcher basically throws you BP. Easy right? It gets harder, the pitcher will begin to throw in curveballs, sliders, changeups, splitters, and even the occasional knuckler. There are powerups you can hit that give you multipliers and big blasts allow you to hit things such as Godzilla or the Times Square ball in NYC (just to name a couple).

The gameplay overall is incredibly satisfying. It’s fast paced, smooth throughout, and everything just looks incredibly fluid. Sprawling catches in the outfield are pulled-off with button combination’s, and are now dubbed “Legendary Catches.” While they look awesome, they get incredibly frustrating when the CPU pulls them off one after another all game long. Hitting is a blast and stays challenging with the incredible movement of all of the pitches. Batters now have a wheelhouse which you can shrink with strikes in that area, but if you slip up, you might as well grab your ankles, because that ball ain’t coming back. Among other changes 2K has added the “Big Slam.” This mode basically gives you a near automatic grand slam, you activate it and face 3 rapid fire pitches, you make contact and you automatically get on, the 4th man up gets rid of the ball into the seats. This game employs a LOT of strategy that you need to constantly be thinking about all game. Do I use this now? If I can save this I can stop them from doing this later, etc.

The graphics…the topic that is near and dear to all gamers hearts. I can tell you with confidence that this is one of the better looking games on the system. The colors are vibrant, the player and stadium modeling is terrific, and stadiums look very much true to form. During night games the game gives you an almost epic movie type feel. Fog will be wafting-in a little bit, the blaring lights sit above you and the crowd roars. This game looked fantastic over my HDMI connection.

Online exists in this game on the Playstation Network, and works quite well overall. You can either play homerun pinball against someone, play a game of Baseball in co-op mode, or just play a versus mode against your buddy. The servers seem to be mostly lag-free and the experience overall is good. I think in the future more can be done with it though.

The game sounds about as well as one might think, satisfying cracks of the bat and of the mitt, and big blasts and big slams sound great. The commentary is actually quite dynamic and is better than I would have thought. It’s not MLB The Show or NBA 2K but it certainly will suffice!

Among all of the tweaks and additions, 2K has once again brought a lot to the plate in The Bigs 2. Personally, I recommend it highly to anyone who has even a minute interest in Americas Past Time (unlike Mark).

Rating:

- Cody Smith