Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

The baseball season is in full swing.  Bats are cracking, balls are flying in the air, and controversy about the home run record are all a part of the summer air.  The season is heating up with the pennant chase tightening up in a few divisions.  Soon the World Series will be upon us to determine the best in Major League Baseball.

With the sports season comes a sports game.  While there are a few realistic baseball games on the market, Visual Concepts has decided to try to go with an arcade title with The Bigs.  Big hits, big plays, and big runs give The Bigs an appropriate name, but does it have the pick up and play feel that makes the game accessible to new players?

The stadiums in The Bigs have been recreated with care.  They look almost photographic with how detailed they look.  As the sun goes down the lights turn on and illuminate the field while the shadow from the sunlight falls across the field.  The stadiums are created like their real-life counterparts.  The details contained within Miller Park, U.S. Cellular Park, and all the other parks are incredibly well done.  The stadiums breathe personality.

The player animations look smooth.  Players run, jump, and slide smoothly without any jerky movements.  Different players have different swings and different stances.  Sometimes you’ll swear you are watching a real game.  That is until you get to see the players up close.  The players have a plastic look to them that sometimes comes off as a bit creepy.  You won’t notice it that often because you aren’t close enough to the players most of the time, but some of the replays or the close-ups break away from the illusion of playing a game.  During these close-ups the backgrounds look very blurry, giving the stadium less detail during these shots.

The thing you’ll notice most about a game like this is the commentary.  If the commentary doesn’t match the on-screen action, then the game would be better without any commentary.  In this case, the commentators handle their job relatively well.  There are a few times where the commentators don’t quite match the action, but they do a decent enough job.

Typically a baseball game doesn’t need much more for sound effects than the crack of the bat and the ball hitting the glove.  These are portrayed accurately, but The Bigs has more.  Hitting the Turbo activates a sound to let you know it was turned on.  During certain big plays, you’ll hear the sound to indicate that the mini-game is activated.  Perhaps the best sound effects are during the Home Run Pinball.  Hitting the ball into the streets of New York City and demolishing cabs, windows, and street signs never sounded so good.  These sounds add a little more to the game than your typical baseball game.

Several different control schemes are required depending on what the situation is.  Most of the time you’ll either be batting or pitching.  While batting, you use the left stick to aim your swing and then hit X to perform a contact swing or Circle to perform a power swing.  Pitching uses the face buttons to pitch the ball and the analog stick to control the position of the ball when it crosses the plate.  A swing meter pops up to control your power and your accuracy.  Unfortunately, the placement to bean the batter is on R2.  Because of the way the SIXAXIS is designed, it’s easy to hit the R2 button accidentally.  I did this on more than one occasion.

While fielding uses the analog stick to move, the X button is used to perform an action.  Unfortunately this is also the button used to throw the ball to home plate.  The other face buttons are used to throw to first, second, and third base one you have the ball.  It’s easy to attempt to make a leaping catch of a ball, but end up throwing to home plate instead.  Mapping the action button to a different button would have probably made more sense.

Still the controls are responsive, even though it will take a little while to get used to the batting perspective.

The main portion of the game is the baseball game.  There are a few different ways to play through.  The Play Now option takes you to the team setup screen and once teams are selected the game starts.  The Exhibition mode is similar, but there are a few other options you can tweak like jersey, difficulty level, and starting pitcher.

The main meat of the game is the Rookie Challenge.  Here you start out as a first-year player that the team has a lot of confidence in to take them all the way to the World Series.  You create a player where you can control his height, stance, handedness, weight, and facial features.  Once you have created the player, you get to allocate points to your player’s attributes.  These are Power, Contact, Arm, Glove, and Speed.  You don’t have much that you can do at first, but as you play the game you earn more points that allow you to allocate more stars.  Once you are done with your initial allocations, you go to a map where you have different locations where you can accept challenges, train, or play actual games.  The challenges and training help to increase your character’s stats, but the main action is where you play games.

If the baseball games don’t play well, then you aren’t going to get a fun experience.  The Bigs mostly succeeds.  Baseball games are won or lost in the batter’s box.  The battle between the batter and pitcher determine the outcome of the game.  The view of the batter’s box does take a little getting used to.  It’s difficult to determine where the pitch will cross the plate and when to swing the bat to hit the ball.  Once you have played a bit it does get easier, but it will take quite a bit of practice.  The games last five innings, but this feels like the right amount of innings to play the game.

Pitching takes a lot of strategy.  You have four different pitches, one assigned to each of the face buttons.  You line up where you want your pitch to cross the plate and then hit the button associated with the pitch you want to throw.  If the batter hits your pitch, a meter for that pitch goes down.  If this meter goes down completely, you won’t be able to use that pitch again.  This places a lot of strategy as to which pitch you’ll use and forces you to mix up your pitches.

As you play you earn turbo points.  You earn these points by not swinging at balls, making big plays, and throwing strikes.  These turbo points can be used to make balls easier to hit or make home run balls catchable.  To catch these home run balls, you need to complete a sequence of face buttons shown at the bottom of the screen, but it isn’t too difficult to do this.

Unfortunately, the game is incredibly hard, especially at the beginning.  This makes the game frustrating at first.  It takes a long time to even pass the first challenge in the map screen.  If the game was a bit easier at first, the game would be more enjoyable.

The Bigs contains two other single player modes.  These are the Home Run Derby and Home Run Pinball.  The Home Run Derby is the same game as what you’d see the pros play at the All-Star Game.  You go head to head against another player and the first to ten points wins the match.  Every fifth pitch is a Bonus Pitch.  If you are able to hit a Bonus Pitch, you can then hit balls worth two points each.

In Home Run Pinball you are pitted in New York’s Times Square.  Cabs are lined up and lights are flashing.  Your objective is to destroy as many signs, windows, and cabs as you can.  If you clear out certain areas, you can earn a bonus.  This mode is a lot of fun, but unfortunately it can get repetitive.  Also, sometimes the pitcher is ready to pitch and the camera hasn’t been completely centered back.  This mode is a lot of fun and it’s a great pick up and play mode for when friends come over.

Multiplayer is available online as well.  In multiplayer up to two players can play on a team.  If two players play on the same team, they alternate batting while on offense.  On Defense, the players switch off pitching every inning, with the other player controlling the default fielder.  You can make your pitching cursor disappear while still moving the left analog stick, so you can surprise the batter.  You can also play the Home Run Derby multiplayer, so you can challenge friends in this mode.

The Bigs has a lot going for it.  The game plays a good game of baseball while still keeping some unique arcade elements.  The game is a lot of fun, but the blistering difficulty makes the game frustrating at first.  The Home Run Baseball mode is a lot of fun and you can find yourself playing it for hours on end.  If Visual Concepts can make the learning curve a bit easier and include a training mode in next year’s version, I could see this as a great series that would be a great inclusion in any sport fan’s library.

Gaming Trend Score

79

1. Graphics: 84
2. Audio: 77
3. Controls: 74
4. Gameplay: 78
5. Value/Replay: 82
6. OVERALL:79