When I was a kid, I was never much into watching basketball, with football being the sport that captured my imagination. Sure, I was sort of into watching the Dallas Mavericks (I was living in Dallas during my formative years) but I was rarely more than a casual fan. So, when it came to a choice of what sports game to buy with my hard earned lawn mowing and chore money, it was a no brainer: Madden. But things changed when I played NBA Jam for the first time. I only understood the bare bones of the rules and strategies of basketball and knew very few of the players. Even at twelve years old, I knew that the craziness of breaking the backboard, heating up, and the general fast pace of the video game hardly resembled real basketball. But it didn’t matter, because as the casual fan I was, it was the gameplay, not the accuracy of the simulation, which grabbed me. So it was that NBA Jam has the distinction of being the only non-football sports game I’ve ever bought.
Like with basketball back in the day, I’m a casual baseball fan at best. So while I understand the rules of baseball, things go over my head quickly, what with the vast number of pitches, rules, and strategies employed. Likewise, in MLB: The Show, the MLB equivalent to Madden, I’m often lost without the guidance of a more knowledgeable player. Luckily for me, The Bigs 2 will be my kind of game, according to Rob Nelson its producer.
Casual fans like me are more interested in highlight reels of big catches and big hits than stats about ERAs and no-hitters. This is where the game will shine. “We’re arcade. We’re over the top,” says Nelson. One of the goals of The Bigs 2 will be to accentuate the excitement of a highlight reel, something arcade sports games have been doing since NBA Jam. Despite this, Nelson insists “[This is] real baseball. We're not out to make you play the game in a way that takes you away from what baseball is.”
2k Sports wants to make the game more attuned to the “sim” aspects of sports game by adding a season mode, which was noticeably absent in the first game. Still, Nelson said “We decided to do it but not get too complicated with contracts and all those sorts of things… [players should be able to] jump in and play." However, they have added aspects of general manager sims (trading, drafting etc.) to the season mode. Likewise, the teams in The Bigs 2 will be more accurate, with players having stats and power ups that are more attuned with their real life counterparts.
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