Review by: Todd Brakke

If you’ve played coin-op sports games NFL Blitz or NBA Jam you have an idea of what to expect from The Bigs 2. It’s baseball, but only in the least literal sense imaginable. It’s too easy to call this game baseball on steroids, or at least a little tacky, but there’s not a lot of other ways to describe it. The Bigs represents baseball as an extreme sport of fireball pitching, moon shot home run hitting, and high flying fielding. The notion that this is a simple game of, “throw the ball, catch the ball, hit the ball,” is pretty much out the window after the introductory video.

I suppose that, for some, the opportunity to play this sort of baseball game is strangely compelling. After all, Blitz was incredibly popular in its heyday. The thing is: the formula for Blitz works in part because the sport on which it’s based is already something of an extreme sport. It’s taking reality and just adding some juice. The Bigs tries to replicate this formula, but at the end of the day, this is baseball we’re talking about. It’s is as not extreme as team sports get.

With that bit of obligatory snobbery out of the way, let’s pretend for a moment to live in a world in which the notion of extreme baseball isn’t patently absurd. The on the field action in The Bigs 2 does bring some interesting facets to the table. Hitters are rated on their ability to hit for contact, hit for power, throwing, fielding and foot speed. Pitchers are rated purely on the quality of each of their pitches. The ratings are all based on a five star system, with some players earning “legendary” status for certain abilities. The differences between players are evident in the gameplay, but the gameplay itself offers little variety.

The batter-pitcher matchup, not surprisingly, almost always ends on either a ball put into play or a strike out. The next walk I see will be the first one. Hitters all have a “wheelhouse” section to the strike zone where they prefer to see their pitches, so as a pitcher it’s best to avoid that zone. However, there are benefits to throwing a pitch there and getting the hitter to whiff on it: It makes the zone smaller for the next pitch or at bat and increases the Turbo meter. That said, if the hitter connects, there’s a solid chance it’s gonna be goodbye Mr. Spalding.