| The Bigs | |
| Developer: | Blue Castle Games |
| Publisher: | 2K |
| Genre: | Sports, baseball |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Platforms: | Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, PlayStation Portable |
The Bigs (stylized as The BIGS) is an arcade-style baseball video game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii and PlayStation Portable. It was released in June 2007 in North America, and in October in the PAL region (Wii only). A sequel, The Bigs 2, was released on July 7, 2009.
The Bigs features "outrageous visuals and intuitive gameplay mechanics", focusing on stylistic rather than realistic design, and gameplay featuring power-ups and turbo. It has also given the game of baseball a more "street" feel to it.[1] The game features online play capability for up to four players on most of the seventh generation consoles, though online play is not compatible on the Wii. The St. Louis Cardinals' first baseman, Albert Pujols, is on the cover. Minnesota Twins first baseman and former MVP Justin Morneau is featured on the cover of limited edition Canadian version sold exclusively by Future Shop and Best Buy. Radio host Damon Bruce provides play-by-play commentary.
When the first trailer was released, gameplay bore a striking resemblance to Midway Games' MLB Slugfest series. However, in an IGN interview, producer Dan Brady stated that "the Slugfest design team made a lot of choices that really made it difficult for a fan of baseball to take the game seriously. Punching on the base path was just one of many of those decisions. The Bigs is authentic baseball taken to arcade proportions".[2]
Offline multiplayer supports up to four players, with Xbox Live support for two.
The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received "generally favorable reviews", while the PlayStation 2, PSP, and Wii versions received "average" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.