FatPitcher wrote:I'm pretty tired of sports games as well. I'd like to see more non-licensed sports games that are designed to be fun video games first and sports games second. The obsession with making things look exactly like they do on TV is a turn-off for me. For one, it tends to make the game less responsive (NBA2K9), and for another, it puts the games in the uncanny valley.
That's generally not a problem with sports games, which lag other genres in terms of graphics fidelity.
In fact, shooters have no problems producing better, smoother graphics without losing responsiveness, with ragdoll physics to boot.
Not that sports games should have ragdoll physics but it would be nice to have some physics.
Obsession? Well that's the way the video game industry has been pushing forward, improving graphics with each generation (except for the Wii and the jury's out whether that will happen again).
I see attempts to make even better-looking games in the future.
It's not that I don't like good graphics, but sports games have taken some of the control and responsiveness out of players' hands in order to look more like their TV counterparts. That is why I said the obsession with making things look like TV rather than saying the obsession with good graphics. There is definitely a difference.
And they can't do fun stuff like baseball stars-style progression because it's not realistic.
FatPitcher wrote:I want to play a remake of Cyberball, with a Franchise mode where you upgrade your robots and develop new technologies over the course of a season.
Yes, yes and yes. MLB Power Pros is a great example of the type of sports games I would like to see more of. I would love a 2D HD version of Tecmo Bowl with full out next gen graphics, current rosters and an expanded playbook. I would love to see a true next gen version of Power Pros. These are the type of games that would get me consistently playing sports games again, not another year of Madden that I feel like I've played for years and years that boast instant replay rewinds or QB vision cones as reasons to buy yet another version.
At this point FIFA makes up around 90% of my sports gaming. I've stopped buying basketball games altogether, in large part because I've lost interest in both the NBA and the NCAA. I still buy NHL, which is a fine game and has pleasantly simple controls, but it generally loses out to FIFA when I want to sit down and play something. And while football games are what got me into the hobby, I rarely have time to actually play one anymore, and even when I do, my game of choice (APF) rarely has enough players online to make it worth the effort.
Come to think of it, I could probably whittle my entire video game collection down to Halo 3, COD 4 and FIFA and be perfectly happy, as that's where the vast majority of my play time gets spent.
FatPitcher wrote:I want to play a remake of Cyberball, with a Franchise mode where you upgrade your robots and develop new technologies over the course of a season.
Yes, yes and yes. MLB Power Pros is a great example of the type of sports games I would like to see more of. I would love a 2D HD version of Tecmo Bowl with full out next gen graphics, current rosters and an expanded playbook. I would love to see a true next gen version of Power Pros. These are the type of games that would get me consistently playing sports games again, not another year of Madden that I feel like I've played for years and years that boast instant replay rewinds or QB vision cones as reasons to buy yet another version.
Agree...
Though I am in the minority here , as I did love NCAA and enjoyed Madden, I would love to see football games done like that. Something fresh would be great.
Oddly enough, I thought NCAA Football 07 on the original XBox was a pretty solid game. It had been tweaked to a decent game of college football, and it still had all the features. With downloaded rosters, I had all the names too. It's my college football game until the 360 version gets its act together.
I definitely have sports gaming malaise. I'm not playing playing nearly as much sports games as I used to. I feel like it's been like this for me for a looong time. I'm a huge hockey fan, I buy at least one hockey game every year, yet I haven't finished a whole season since NHL 98. The only other sports game (other than text sims) where I have finished a season was NCAA 07 and that was a anomaly considering I'm not even a football fan.
I think it's a combination of lack of innovation and that I've just become so frustrated with the fact that nearly every game has some kind of completely unrealistic aspect to it. It's usually something important like AI or physics.
Part of it is that my expectations have gone way up. I would have hated NHL 98 if I played it with my current mind set. Although my expectations may be high I still feel that they are justified. It's been a decade since NHL 98. I feel that they should be closer to meeting my expectations than they are now.
I know a lot of people on here really enjoy NHL 09 and I can see where the game has it's good points. It makes for a decent two player game. That being said I tried so hard to like it but there are too many fundamental things that are broken for me. This is how I feel with just about every sports game these days. My only exception would probably be The Show and even that had it's problems.
With NHL the physics are way off. Even the way shots behave just feels so broken. Players can lift blistering wrist shots or backhanders just up under the crossbar all the damn time, no matter what position they are in or how much time they should have to get some force behind the shot. This is a physics problem and I feel like it's been around since NHL 04 which a lot of people liked but I also thought was crap. All they have done is tweaked the game and added new controls. I really don't feel like I'm playing a completely different game than 5 years ago.
Also, netminders are constantly letting in freak goals that somehow bounce off their pads in unnatural ways. Add that to an AI that is always one step ahead of you both physically and mentally and it's such a frustrating game.
Sorry to go off on just a single game but I think it's a perfect example of how most sports games make me feel these days. Very few games, if any feel like an organic experience and I feel that we should be much closer to that point by now.
On the innovation front I will say that games like World of Goo, Portal and Braid are so much more intriguing to me. Those kinds of games make me excited about the endless possibilities of video games as an art form. I can't blame the sports game developers for this. It's just the nature of working with games that are completely based on the real world.
"Be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium." -Nick Hornby
Yesterday was the perfect example of where my mind is at with gaming these days. Prior to the Super Bowl I had a few minutes to kill, and felt like a quick game. I thought about Madden or NFL 2k5, seeing as how it was a fottball day, but ended up playing Rock Band. Same thing happened after the game. Instead of choosing a football game, which I would have done in past years, I went back to Rock Band.
