![\"BigHB\"](\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/BigHB.jpg\" "\\"BigHB\\"")
Spring Training games have started and baseball is about to make that effortless slide from being a regular occupier of my thoughts to an almost constant one.\u00c2\u00a0 Most things (annual leave, eating, sleeping etc) revolve around the baseball schedule from this point until the end of October and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just the way I like it.<\/p>\n
So, reading news stories online, following Spring Training games, flicking through baseball books and writing about the sport still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come close to fulfilling my need for baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 Looking for further baseball fixes, my attention turned to a new game for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.<\/p>\n
Big Hit Baseball was released just over a week ago and costs \u00c2\u00a31.19 on the UK Apple iTunes store, with a free \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 version that limits the\u00c2\u00a0app to\u00c2\u00a0two teams and three-inning games.<\/p>\n
The app was made by Square Enix and unsurprisingly follows a similar format to their Big Cup Cricket app.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an arcade style game designed to provide a bit of baseball-related fun on a mobile device.\u00c2\u00a0 You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t control the base-running game nor do a great deal from the fielding perspective and tactics really aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a part of it.\u00c2\u00a0 You can hit the ball, pitch and catch (the latter either jumping to catch it or via a dive) and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about all you would want to do on a game like this.\u00c2\u00a0 Trying to control base-runners or selecting which fielder should go for the ball would probably make things a bit too fiddly.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As it is, you can give the ball a good whack by sliding your finger in the direction you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like the ball to go, with the timing and length of your \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcswipe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 dictating how well you hit the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 You also use a sliding action to pitch, producing plenty of laughs when throwing cartoonesque sweeping curve balls.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
If I was to request one change to the current gameplay it would be that a bit more craft is involved in the pitching.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes whatever you do, the opposition tees off on you and crooked numbers can be common.\u00c2\u00a0 Allowing the player to trick the opposition with a bit of cunning (fastball to the outside corner followed by change-up in the same place tumbling down out of the zone etc) would add an extra element of enjoyment to it.<\/p>\n
This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t an MLB affiliated product so the teams are a fairly random group (\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcTokyo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOntario\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDominican Republic\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to name three), but you can edit the the players if , like me, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re happy to spend a minute or so keying in a Dominican Republic World Baseball Classic style team.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a practice section where you can learn the basic controls, a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcShowdown\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 game in which you play a one-off contest and a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcBig Hit Series\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in which you can play a whole competition.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even jaunty organ music to bring the spirit of the ballpark to the contest.\u00c2\u00a0 My only baseball-stickler gripes are that every caught ball is called a fly ball (no lineouts or pop-ups here) and when you hit a batter the game calls it a walk.<\/p>\n
But those are just minor marks against the game.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fun app for baseball fans and gives us yet another excuse to think about the sport even more before the ‘real’ games begin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A review of Big Hit Baseball, a new arcade-style baseball game for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[384],"class_list":["post-10235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10270,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10235\/revisions\/10270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}