When The BIGS say fastball, they mean it

When we say fastball, we MEAN fastball. Here’s a dirty little secret in baseball video games – and no, it’s not that half the virtual players are on steroids, and the other half are too dead-arsed drunk to throw the ball. Says The BIGS producer Dan Brady (remember him?) to IGN,

Here is a little known fact about simulation baseball games: A 100 mph fastball does not actually move at 100 mph in the game. The games have historically slowed the pitches down for pacing reasons.

Those (insert random curse here)! You mean all this time we thought we were pitching fastballs, they “weren’t really” fastballs? And what “pacing reasons”? But Brady promises that in The BIGS, fastballs will really be fastballs. “As a batter, this really puts you on the edge of your seat, because the swing/no swing decision is a split-second decision – just like real baseball.”

Oh, thank goodness. And for a moment we thought we might as well be playing teeball.

So how will it look like on the pitcher’s mound? 2K Sports designed the mechanic around a “meter-based system”, says Brady. He also says it’ll be nearly impossible to “have consistently perfect execution” with this interface, but if and when you pull a perfect pitch, “you are going to notice a little bit extra on the pitch and the batter is going to be left guessing”.

Now because The BIGS will star in three disparate platforms, Brady promises that we’ll see “platform specific modes” in the game. The Wii, especially, will see “a ton of unique content, all based around the Wii’s revolutionary controller”. We’re hoping this does not include a range of humorous injuries inflicted with the Wiimote.

When we say fastball, we MEAN fastball. Here’s a dirty little secret in baseball video games – and no, it’s not that half the virtual players are on steroids, and the other half are too dead-arsed drunk to throw the ball. Says The BIGS producer Dan Brady (remember him?) to IGN,

Here is a little known fact about simulation baseball games: A 100 mph fastball does not actually move at 100 mph in the game. The games have historically slowed the pitches down for pacing reasons.

Those (insert random curse here)! You mean all this time we thought we were pitching fastballs, they “weren’t really” fastballs? And what “pacing reasons”? But Brady promises that in The BIGS, fastballs will really be fastballs. “As a batter, this really puts you on the edge of your seat, because the swing/no swing decision is a split-second decision – just like real baseball.”

Oh, thank goodness. And for a moment we thought we might as well be playing teeball.

So how will it look like on the pitcher’s mound? 2K Sports designed the mechanic around a “meter-based system”, says Brady. He also says it’ll be nearly impossible to “have consistently perfect execution” with this interface, but if and when you pull a perfect pitch, “you are going to notice a little bit extra on the pitch and the batter is going to be left guessing”.

Now because The BIGS will star in three disparate platforms, Brady promises that we’ll see “platform specific modes” in the game. The Wii, especially, will see “a ton of unique content, all based around the Wii’s revolutionary controller”. We’re hoping this does not include a range of humorous injuries inflicted with the Wiimote.

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