No Bigs 2? No problem!

With no sign of The Bigs 2 coming out any time soon, I’ve had to look elsewhere for my baseball-gaming fix.  I attempted to play MLB2K8 a while back, since it’s the only baseball game that’s come out this year for the 360.  Too bad it’s absolute garbage.  The pitching, batting, fielding, etc. is just way too complicated.  The beauty of The Bigs is that the mechanics of the game itself are incredibly simple and intuitive, resulting in a game of baseball that is just a lot of fun to play.

I thought all was lost, but lucky for me, I was COMPLETELY wrong.  Since I’ve been TV-less for over a month, I decided I’d bring my old PS2 upstairs and hook it up to my computer monitor.  Looking into some of the new games, I saw MLB Power Pros 2008.  I grabbed it, tried it out.

Turns out the game is absolutely fantastic.  First of all, the actual baseball game play is simple.  While not AS simple as The Bigs, you can get by with a basic knowledge of the controls.  There’s a swing button, a bunt button and pressing R1 will toggle ‘Big Swing’ mode.  Pitching consists of selecting your pitch using the analog stick and pressing X.  Base running and fielding are both straight-forward as well.  Good stuff! All of the characters are big-headed, deformed little fellows, which kind of reminds me old-school MLB games on the NES.

The real great thing about this game, though, is the MLB Life mode.  Well, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Before you play the MLB Life mode, there’s the Success mode.  You start off on a AA team called the Green Apples, and the goal is to impress the scouts enough to get promoted to AAA and then the Majors.  It plays like a mini RPG, requiring you to level up your character, meet new people, hold down a job, impress the ladies, etc.  During the actual games, you only need to play your character’s At Bats.  It makes every At Bat seem pretty important. Once you successfully complete Success mode, you can then use that character in MLB Life mode.

MLB Life mode starts you off in the Grapefruit league, trying to earn a spot on the Big Club.  If you’re decent, you join the team and get a couple opportunities as a pinch hitter to prove you’ve got what it takes.  Impress the manager enough and you’ll earn a regular spot in the line-up.  Have a bad game and you run the risk of getting demoted.  It’s similar to the Rookie Challenge in The Bigs, but with a lot more depth and a lot more character development.  Also, it’s incredibly addicting.  Since each game only takes about 2 or 3 minutes to complete, ‘One More Turn’ syndrome is out in full-force.  Also, I don’t usually get angry at a game, but when Little Chris goes 0-4 the first game back from injury and is forced to sit the next game… oh boy. 

If you’re a PS2 or Wii owner and you’re looking for a solid baseball fix, I highly recommend this fine piece of software.  There’s also a DS version on the way in the fall, which I’m confident will be the absolute end of me.  If the MLB Life mode makes it over in-tact, and the game play isn’t muddled with some sort of crappy stylus-based control scheme, I’ll be in some sort of baseball-gaming heaven. 

What else can you find in baseball-gaming heaven?  Dogs.  That’s the heaven they all go to.