Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

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Retro STrife
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Re: Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

Postby Retro STrife » December 24th, 2021, 10:31 pm

Yeah, despite being a huge sports fan in real life, I don’t play many sports video games anymore. I agree that they’re all the same each year (buying once every 3-5 years is usually good enough), and the hyper focus on realism has taken away from the fun. Also, they are huge time investments now, so newer sports games are lacking the pick-up-and-play aspect that the genre used to have.

That said, I personally love the 2K series. Specifically- I love the MyPlayer online modes and can get addicted for 50+ hours easily. Yes, the microtransactions border on predatory, because you basically have to buy them to make a competitive player. But for a fan of basketball, there’s just nothing like playing a 5-on-5 game online with 10 real people, if you end up with good teammates.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

Postby VideoGameCritic » December 25th, 2021, 7:00 pm

Retro, the fact that you can play a reasonable game of basketball with 10 different people in NBA 2K tells me that it is a very realistic, well-constructed game. I'm impressed gamers can cooperate that well!

Looking back to my NBA Live 95 multiplayer days, I remember all of my teammates regularly converging on the basket or taking the very first shot. It was pretty comical. With the fouls turned off we'd just trying to run over the other team.

TheEagleXIII
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Re: Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

Postby TheEagleXIII » December 25th, 2021, 10:51 pm

Gonna continue veering this conversation completely off-topic, cos I don't see me ever telling this anecdote anywhere else, but I used to occasionally play FIFA 12 online where up to 11 real people on each team could claim one of the players to exclusively control for a match.

One game, I was on Real Madrid controlling Cristiano Ronaldo with 6 other guys on my team (you still play 11 v 11, the AI controls unclaimed players). They were all Spanish speakers, which was super rare, as I always usually ended up in a English language games. Anyway, I always tried to play properly when I was 'off the ball'. Stay open for a pass, draw defenders away from the guy with the ball, stick close to goal for any potential rebounds.

Madrid played with 3 attackers, and my 2 fellow strikers were more concerned with pulling off tricks, showboating and scoring solo effort goals. No matter how much I genuinely tried to play supportively, they just ran into me over and over. So I got a bunch of Spanish guys calling me out over voice chat. This only worsened when one of them had a clear path to the goal, and despite keeping my distance and running alongside him, he got cocky near the goalie and somehow ran into me - which the player animation interpreted as me tackling the ball from him, leaving me with an open goal that I had to shoot into. Despite not understanding Spanish, I could tell they were calling me out.

As if that wasn't stupid enough, the same guy managed to do it a second time. No matter how much I really tried to keep my distance and play a supporting role. I was open and instead of passing for me to tap in, he got cocky and tried to take it around the defenders and goalie. He ran into me again, making it look like I tackled him (even though it's impossible to do to a teammate) robbing him of the goal and tapping the ball in from 1 foot out for my 2nd goal.

"RONALDO ES PUTA!! RONALDO ES PUTA!!" filled my ears immediately after and for the rest of the game.

Somehow that was actually a more pleasant experience than playing racing games online. If you drive fairly and properly everyone crashes into you. If you drive aggressive like everyone else you get called out - and booted - for unfair play. At the end of the day, even if you play properly, you're still at the mercy of the group around you, and the more of you playing the harder it was. So competent 5v5 basketball is definitely a massive achievement for 2K

jon
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Re: Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

Postby jon » December 28th, 2021, 10:38 am

I think realism is a farce. My favorite running back of all time is Barry Sanders. There's no way a video game could recreate all his moves. My favorite QB is Dan Marino. And it's basically impossible to recreate his quick release.

I still played the rare sports game until 2009 probably. But in the late 90's is when I noticed a real change for the worse. From 1997 to 1998 was the big change. There used to be great baseball and football computer games. Front Page Sports Baseball Pro '98 is still probably the most realistic baseball game ever. There, among other things, was an amazing dynasty mode which Sierra was great at. Come 1998 the only baseball computer game at stores was Triple Play 98. There wasn't even a dynasty mode and it was basically sacrificing everything for "gameplay". Also at this time the only football computer game available was Madden, which also I don't think had a dynasty mode, at least the computer version. That was unreal. It was a joke. That's when EA really started getting a monopoly on everything.

But back to realism. I was in the early 90's really looking forward to having real players in football games. But like I mentioned, just because it's the player's name doesn't mean they'll play anything like in real life. The last modern sports game I played was College Hoops 2k8, which I plan on firing up again in the future.

Tron
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Re: Is This the Worst Period in Gaming History for Sports?

Postby Tron » May 21st, 2022, 10:00 pm

This is the worst period for everything that I’ve seen yet. The world has gone mad.


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