Well since there is more and more Wii people joining up and as I stayed over 5 hours last night playing BIGS for the Wii.
As a baseball game, its pretty much the Wii play baseball with some added mini games and MLB related goals. Pitching and Hitting are implemented fairly well, I haven't played multiplayer yet so I'm not sure how it deals with not giving away the placement of your pitch to your opponent.
The game uses the Wii + nunchuk which is mayhaps, my least favorite control scheme as precision with it, and has a large learning curve before you're comfortable.
The pitching is fairly natural, swing your arm down and twist in a direction to get a particular pitch. Once the batters have abused a fastball, slider, or other pitch you lose the ability to pitch that specific pitch. If you fail to articulate the pitch correctly you serve up a 'meatball'. By default your aim will be kept inside or on the line of a strike zone (you hold 'Z' to aim outside of the strike zone). You achieve a perfect pitch by having good arm speed and the correct button combination + wrist twist. When that occurs, your pitches on the corners of the plate will count as strikes rather than balls. The wrist twists are a little unnatural, its more or less the reverse motion of attempting to put spin on the ball in Wii Bowling.
Batting is simple you face the TV and flick the remote in a reverse 'J' holding it straight up right, turning it towards the TV and following through the ball. Following through is a little awkward to master at first as the timing for contact is largely dependent on your follow through. After a few hours worth of training mini games/home run derby, I was hitting home runs over the baggy in right field with Joe Mauer (3 star power rating).
The game modes are pretty scarce. You have Home Run, Exhibition, Play Now, Multiplayer, Rookie Challenge and Tutorial.
The Rookie Challenge mode plays through similar to Soul Calibur's story mode. You can earn unlocks and 'steal' players from other teams. Last night I earned an opportunity to steal someone from KC, but decided that the Twins took the only player worth stealing from KC awhile ago anyways (Rondell...who sucks...anyways).
The gamespot review is dead on, the main thing i had problems with was the fielding. You are supposed to hold a and flick the remote towards the base you want to throw to. For the first few hours I was throwing to third instead of first over and over again, and home instead of 2nd. It was VERY fucking frustrating losing game after game because of (what I though) was a glitchy control system. But, admitting that 9 out of 10 reported problems are end-user based and the obvious correlation between throwing to the base opposite what I intended, I looked at my mechanics. I'd hold the 'A' flick the remote and third base. So, after I pitched I returned my nunchuk/wiimote to the default horizontal positions, focusing on the TV intensely for Ken Griffey Jr's response, he slaps it to my SS, holding the wiimote neutral, I then pressed 'A' flicked the remote to the right, and released at the end of my flick. WAH FUCKING LAH. So, THATS how you control the fielding. After I chanted 'Hold A, flick, !RELEASE A!' to myself a million times I was able to do this fairly regularly. On occasion I'm still flicking it to the wrong base, but the game is enough fun in other areas that I can overlook this control gaff. I can recall an Atari Baseball game where I always had problems throwing to the correct base and the mechanic with that shitty rubberized joystick was similar, although I never did get a hang of it on the Atari. I would tear my hair out in frustration as infield dribbler after infield dribbler would fill the bases.
You control the fielder with the analog on the nunchuk, and you can 'turbo' the fielder by waving the wiimote up and down. This also works while rounding the bases, and I only experienced the gafs the gamespot reviewer had with the base running once, when I assumed I was close to the bag and just let up on the remote instead of holding the analog straight up towards second. You round bases by directing the analog towards the bag you want to go to next, and you slide/hurdle by tapping the A button and wave the wiimote up and down, of course, to turbo run. I pulled off a few in the park home runs in KC and Minnesota.
When I played Tampa, I would hit a homer to the right field, The outfielder would jump to get it, it'd bounce off his glove and back into play, and before hitting the ground, the center fielder would catch it for the out. That was one of a plethora of NBA Jams moments the game has. Also, when you plow a line drive right back at the pitcher, it'll bounce off his head/glove/body and if the infield is lucky enough they can catch the ricochet for the out.
The stats progression is tony hawk in nature, you get points and fill stars as you earn points to buy them. The categories are Contact, Hitting, Speed, Arm, and Fielding.
Overall, I'd give it an 8 out of 10, there isn't tons of replayability here, the learning curve is semi-steep (it may take a friend a few hours to learn how to play it and I don't think there is ANY chance in hell my girl will ever be able to coordinate the control scheme).
The graphics are cool, the announcing isn't too annoying, the soundtrack is basically Guitar Hero (ace of spades, alice in chains, some other rock chart hits).
I don't know if you can bean someone, you can throw it over their head, but I'm not sure about hitting them. At this time, I think that shit is disabled, which is pretty ghey, because nothing would be more fun than beaning barry bonds.
Oh, also there is the obligatory 'big play' meter that all games like these have. There is some good twists to the strategy for it. You can steal your opponents through pitching perfect pitches or you can choose a big hit, if you make any contact with the ball while this is engaged you hit a Robert Redford The Natural-style homer, no matter how weak the guy is.
There is stamina with the pitching, all the roster shuffles you could want (lineup, defense, etc).
I wouldn't suggest this to a group of people that are neutral on baseball, you have to enjoy baseball to want to get over the difficult control scheme.