If you didn't happen to catch the first Bigs game, you definitely missed out on a well-made game outside of the beaten-to-death realm of simulated sports. In fact, we played it exponentially more than 2K Sports' other baseball game for just that reason: While the MLB 2K series is in the business of one-upping its competition from Sony, The Bigs is plain ol' unfettered fun. There really isn't anything on the market quite like it, unless you wander into kid-friendly versions like Backyard Baseball or MLB Power Pros.

So, this is a grown-up arcade baseball game, a la Baseball Stars 2 on Neo Geo, and our sneak preview of the game at a 2K Sports event at Citi Field yielded nothing but salivating game journalists in dire need of additional playing time. With that said, here's what we thought:

First and foremost: Prince Fielder is an awesome choice for the box cover. Not only is he the epitome of what the sport is all about—outrageous displays of slugging (and hot dogs...lots and lots of hot dogs)—but he's also a good spokesperson for the league.



"Why am I so black?" asked Jose Reyes in his Dominican accent to no one in particular during his 10-minutes side session of Home Run Pinball at Citi Field. He was being facetious, but from our view, there could have been a bit more of an upgrade to the player models. Because it's an action sports game, you won't notice it much when players are running and jumping around the field. And frankly, who cares. It's just so much fun.

Now on to the game itself. Simply put, it's an ADHD patient's dream come true. Even more simply put, it's baseball on steroids, but with more fancy explosions and mayhem. If we put it any more simpler, we'll just have to explain all of this with grunts and monosyllabic expressions punctuated with fart noises.

The biggest change to the series, at least from our perspective, is the Big Slam. You may have remembered the Big Blast powerup from the first game which gave you a guaranteed homer if you initiated it and then made contact with the ball. Well, the Big Slam gives you the opportunity to hit a grand slam. When you enter Big Slam mode, you will be faced with four pitches in quick succession. Every ball that you make contact with will reward you with a basehit, and if you nail the last delivery from the mound, you will launch a coup de grâce homer that'll leave your opponent in disbelief that he just gave up his three-run lead. If you swing and miss at some of the pitches, you won't be charged with an out, which makes sense as there are only three outs in an inning, but you won't get the maximum possible of runs. This is obviously a game-changing kind of feature and will require you to change up your strategy from the previous iteration quite a bit.



All of that may seem like it's impossible to pitch well, but there is a delivery system that rewards you for challenging picky players in their "wheelhouse." Of course, you're going to need to keep them off-balanced, which is where your power meter comes into play. Nail the appropriate timing for each pitcher and their pitches will be more effective, i.e. fastballs travel faster, curveballs loop higher and land lower.

With that out of the way, we really enjoyed the "new" Home Run Pinball mode. Well, there's really nothing new except that there are now four different locations including Tokyo, Las Vegas, Times Square (from the original game), and an old-timey version of Times Square where monacled gentlemen likely greet you with, "Pip pip, young boy; let's scadoodle along now." there are some surprises hidden in the maps; the one we saw was Godzilla hiding behind some billboards and we were told that if you hit him with a ball, he burns down half of Japan. Fair warning, Orient.


The basic gameplay is essentially the same: Keep whacking the ball toward lights, signs, and vehicles for points and powerups and avoid swinging and missing. It gets harder as more pitches are added to the thrower's repertoire, like sliders and knee-buckling 12-6 curveballs. Oh, did we mention that you can now play it on Xbox Live and PSN? Five-year-old screaming children: You're lunch!

There are a ton of other things we could go into, but we really didn't have that much time to experience it. From what 2K indicated, the season mode is less annoying with how you progress through it, but all of your decisions—like stealing players from other teams and player upgrades—are more crucial in determining what kind of team you want. One thing is clear: If you're tired of the miniscule baby steps simulation baseball games take annually in attempting to finagle another 60 bucks out of your pocket, arcade baseball is the way to go and The Bigs 2 seems like the safest bet at this point.

The Bigs 2 slides into stores on July 7 for the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, and Nintendo DS.