Over the weekend I downloaded the Demo for The Bigs 2 from the Xbox Marketplace, now I am a baseball fan to start with but I have to say that I absolutely loved this demo, so much so that I played it around 20 times over the weekend and can’t wait for this title to be released.

If you are even remotely interested in Baseball I strongly recommend giving this title a shot. But that is not the point of this article, Quick Time Events (QTE) are.

I have never had strong feelings about QTE’s myself but after playing The Bigs I have suddenly become a big fan of them.

How it works in The Bigs is that I send down the perfect pitch straight over the plate, the batter manages to make contact and rips the ball straight back at me on the pitchers mound and instantly the screen slows down a bit and a bunch of buttons appear on the screen.

I get about a second or two to smash all those buttons and if I do so I pull of an amazing catch else the guy fumbles it. What makes it so great is that you never know when it is going to happen and you get no second chances.

if you miss the chance is gone and the game continues. Thus when you get it right the feeling of awesomeness engulfs you and you really feel like you were part of the game.

Then to make it better, the QTE’s are varied depending on which awesome catch you are pulling off. So sometimes you just see 4 buttons you need to hit quickly then at other times you need to select the right button as it flashes in front of you for a millisecond. Other mini games include using the triggers to balance your fielder while he hangs over a railing or smashing the A button to see if you can overpower the catcher coming in to home plate.

In essence The Bigs have nailed the use of QTE’s to extend and improve the gameplay while immersing the player instead of making the QTE’s a barrier to continuance which is generally the case.