Pros: Great graphics. Fun gameplay. Rookie challenge is fun. Great music.
Cons: Not close to true life mlb play. No season play.
The bottom line: Overall, a lot of fun for an arcade game. But you will still need MLB for true game play if you are a baseball fanatic like me.
Over the weekend, I went out to our favorite place, Costco, to pick up a few items. While there, I saw a game that I have been dying to get my hands on, but have been waiting due to lack of funds. However, want won out over monetary inefficiency and I found myself with The Bigs in hand.

After what seemed like forever and a day, I was finally able to unwrap that sucker and boot it up Monday afternoon. The photos and videos I have seen since I first heard about it were absolutely amazing. Nothing short of a must have for any sport loving xbox fanatic. And after spending a few hours with it last night, I must say that while it doesn't fully live up to the photographic evidence, it does a pretty darn good job of getting as close as you can.

Now don't go picking up The Bigs thinking you are going to get a true to life MLB xbox 360 experience like MLB 2k7. This is a very arcade-like game. Everything is bigger. The hits are monstrous, the jumps are nothing short of superman type feats, the crashes are nothing short of rugby gone wild, and the players look like they all have had some kind of contact with Barry Bond's trainer. Everything has intentionally been exaggerated so that the game play will be less tedious than MLB 2k7 was. Don't get me wrong, I love MLB 2k7, but it lacks a lot of the fun that Baseball itself used to have back in the 80's and 90's and is all about serious game play. The Bigs delivers the serious just like Andy Petite delivers the high change up to Big Papi at clutch time.

Knowing all of this, I booted up the game and had a few choices of how I wanted to start my Bigs experience. You can play a regular game, start a rookie challenge, play a head to head home run derby, choose the pinball style home run derby or get online and play a few matches against some of your friends or enemies.

I must say that I was a little disapointed that you can't play a season like in every other MLB game on the market. The Rookie Challenge is fun, but I would love to have seen the stats engine of a MLB 2k7 behind this one as well as I played or simmed my way through an entire season. Complete with MVP's, batting titles and World Champions.

Rookie Challenge

For me, I have been wanting to see the rookie challenge since I first read about it, so that is what I choose. Basically, you start the rookie challenge by creating your own player with name, look, number and fielding position. And with all of that, you start out just where you think you would...as a rookie. You suck. No offense, but you do. You have some points to get started with, but beyond that, you aren't much use.

The points are put into a bank every time you gain more. And to increase in contact, power, arm, catching and speed, you have to buy those skills from what you have in the bank. For instance, you start off with 50,000 points in the bank. To increase to the first level (indicated by stars) of any of those five areas, it costs 10,000 points. So I put one star into each section. And as you move your way up, the stars get more and more expensive to purchase. To get the second star, it costs 15,000 points. The third, I believe is 25,000 points, and so on. If you are playing on easy, it shouldn't take long to gain some points where you can become a fairly good player. But on some of the more difficult levels, it becomes harder and harder to get the points you need to rank up.

Now to add one more piece to the puzzle, as you rank up and gain more abilities, you do two things. First off, you unlock new games and training and you also unlock new looks to yourself and new attitudes (from what I've read at least). "Attitudes" include sunglasses, tattoos, and new bat designs as you can see in the image.

As for me, I created myself as a Red Sox first baseman (sorry Youk) and put spread my initial points into the 5 categories. When you start out, you start in Spring Training. You play a 5 inning game and get whatever points you have accumulated through either hits, runs, rbi's, home runs, etc... Unfortunately for me, I went 0 for 2 with an rbi, so I only got a few points with that.

After winning that game, you get a few training options opened up. However, unlike a lot of sports games, you can only do these training options once. When you finish a few games or training sessions, new areas of the US map are opened up where more games or training sessions are given to you. So after Spring Training, it's onto Boston for the home opener. Then Kansas City or Florida to play a few games. One interesting "mini-game" I played in Kansas City was a come from behind game where it is the top of the 9th inning, you are down by 1 run and you have to come from behind to win the game. Others let you play a game and to win the mini-game, you need to get a hit, an rbi or a home run with your rookie. I'm sure there will be more of those to come, so I am definitely looking forward to playing as much as I can!

All in all, the rookie challenge is a lot of fun. Though after 2 hours or so, I got a little tired of it and had to stop playing. There's only so much baseball I can handle at once!

Home Run Derby...Take 1

However, after the rookie challenge, I opted to try the pinball style home run derby. Obviously choosing my man Big Papi for the job, I found myself in New Yorks Time squre facing down a pitcher of unknown ilk.

The job here is to rack up as many points as you can by hitting different sections of Times Square. You can hit taxis, signs, billboards, store fronts, etc... And if you hit enough objects in a certain area, then you can get bonus points awarded to you.

After a few rounds, I had enough and had to stop. It is definitely a lot of fun and a good break after playing game after game, but it becomes the same thing over and over again. So what did I do next? I found my way over to the head to head home run derby just to try it out.

Home Run Derby...Take 2

Big Papi vs. Alfonso Soriano. Basically the way it works is that you are side by side on the screen hitting into San Francisco Bay. On smaller screens I can easily see how this would be problematic as I had some issues on my HD screen. But that's probably because I get distracted easily, so my eyes kept wandering over to see what Soriano was doing. But overall, another good break from the games, but not something that would keep me fully interested for long times to come.

The one thing I did not try in my efforts was the online play. I don't know anyone else with the game and I am honestly not a huge fan of just going randomly online to play a game that could take upwards of an hour to play. Rainbow Six and those types of games, I'm okay with. But a one on one game like this, I don't really care for. There's only so many times in a given day I can tolerate a 12 year old calling me a punk as he crushes his 5th homerun of the inning off me.

With that, my game play ended. It was definitely an enjoyable experience and I can't wait to get my hands on it again this afternoon. Too bad work gets in the way! But with that review of my own play, let's take a look at some of the other features of the game.

Sound

This is one section of the game that I couldn't even begin to find a fault with. Most EA games I have played have had some of the worst music I have ever heard. For instance, I can't stand the music Madden puts into their games. Nor do I care for the NBA music. Even MLB 2k7 got annoying after a while. But the lineup they have with this game is amazing! They have quite the mix going with Jane's Addiction, Screaming Trees, Stone Temple Pilots and even throw in some Midnight Oil and Primus in there. Very eclectic in their choices. And they all work perfectly for me. Even Primus, whom I love, but would never have thought to put into a sports game.

Here's the list of bands that are in the game:

* Blue October
* Fu Manchu
* Highbench
* Jane's Addiction
* Killing Joke
* Midnight Oil
* Motörhead
* Primus
* Rollins Band
* Satellite Party
* Screaming Trees
* Stone Temple Pilots
* The Stooges
* White Zombie

And if you want a taste of them from the 2k Sports site, here you go.

As for the commentary, it's not too bad. Nothing that they spent too much time with, but it's there and it works for the game. There were times when it would pause in the middle of a sentance which definitly got a little annoying (like "And the Red Sox are ahead 3 to ...
... 1"). But overall, it was adequate.



Achievements

In The Bigs, there are plenty of achievements to get. And because of that, each one isn't worth as much. Some games have very few, but each achievement is worth a lot more and more satisfying to get. However in this one, you get 25 here, 5 there. Still satisfying to get, but not as much. And with that, most of them are very easy to obtain. Get your first strikeout. Get your first home run. In the 2 plus hours I played, I obtained 300+ achievement points.

All in all, there are only a few achievements that I find might be problematic. But most of them are fairly easy to obtain.

achievements are plentiful, but easy to come by. In two hours of playing, I already had almost half of the achievements. You can easily get 3/4ths of them after a while of play. There are a few hard ones to get, but definitely not impossible. Just a lot of practice and you're there.

Gameplay

The gameplay isn't that much different from most baseball games you will play. The problem, however, is that the differences that do exist, are fairly big differences. For instance, if you are at bat and you hit a ball, you need to get the player going by pushing the left joystick to the base you want to go. If you dinged a good one into the deep outfield and want to try for some extra bases, you then push the left joystick upwards to go towards second base. However, if you happen to stop pushing upwards towards second base, the runner will slow down and then stop wherever he was when you let go of the stick. I don't know how many base runners I had get tagged out because I didn't push towards the base long enough, so they just stopped dead a foot away from the base. That got a little annoying, but it is something you just have to get used to.

The pitching is nice. Just hold down on a button until the line gets to where you want it to be and you let go. Easy as pie.

Fielding is just like every other game. The game chooses the nearest fielder to grab the ball, and then you throw it to whatever base you want. I haven't see any cut off men yet, so maybe that is something that is either missing or I haven't needed as of yet.

You can climb the wall, and this is where one of the exaggerated parts comes into play. Your man can launch himself off of the outfield wall to jump 30 feet plus into the air to snag any wannabe homers that your pitcher might have given up.

And hitting is as simple as pressing either the A button for contact or the B button for a power swing.

Now one thing you will notice is that every time you succeed at something, you gain points. As a pitcher, If you get a strikeout you get points. Or if you make a diving or leaping catch, you get points. As a batter, if you let a ball pass you get points. Or if you hit a single, double, triple or home run, you get points. These points all add up so you can use turbo skills to pitch harder, or to hit longer. And if you amass a certain amount of points, you max out your turbo points and when utilized, basically makes you unstoppable. Every time I have used my maxed out turbo points, I have crushed one into the teletron with flames shooting from behind the ball and sending sparks flying from the scoreboard. Definitly something that lifts your spirits when you're the one behind the bat. Or destroys you when done against you.

Graphics

The graphics are definitly stellar. I have very little to complain about there. Some of the faces look dead on with their real life counter parts while others look absolutely nothing like them. Papelbon, Ortiz, Drew and Lugo all looked fairly close to real life. Schilling, Matsuzaka and Pedroia, however, didn't even come close.

For instance, if you look at this picture of Ichiro from the 2k Sports website, you can see that it's pretty close.

But if you look at this picture of Nomar, it's close, but not quite there. Leaves you guessing just a little bit.

Another positive yet negative are the face choices for the rookie challenge. When you go through them, it looks like there are a lot that you can use to customize your character more thuroughly. But I tried to make my guy look as close to me as I could get (a bald, pasty white guy) but ended up with a steroid infused hispanic character somehow. A better looking A-Rod if you will.

The level of realizm here, while maybe not quite fully there yet, definitely adds another level to the game play. I really felt that they are more than just digital characters but more to their true to life counter parts. Unfortunately for me, however, I felt like I was playing some other character and just using my name. I should have just named him Roid Rage the way I was bulked up.

Overall

With only 2 hours in, I have over 300+ achievement points, have built up my character a bit and have definitly enjoyed my purchase. The graphics are terrific minus a few missing links in the MLB gene pool, the music is terrific and the gameplay is incredibly easy to learn, but a takes a little getting used to.

Overall, I am very happy with my purchase and can't wait to play more of it.