Modern Sports Games

 

For as long as I can remember, sports video games have tried their best to recreate what it is like to watch sports on TV. Throughout the years games have had various levels of success at accomplishing this style of presentation. When I was younger sports games were some of my favorite video games to play. This lasted through the PS2 era. I remember playing Madden '11 on the PS3, but not much else, and by the time I started playing the PS4 sports games took a back seat to other types of games. However, in the PS5 era with Playstation Plus, I have had access to many sports games that I've been able to play and they are fantastic. Instead of discussing them individually, I thought it would be better to discuss my experience with them collectively. My impressions and experiences with the games are similar and thus my thoughts on one game generally cross over to the other games.

The sports games I've been able to play the most are NBA 2K24 and FC24, so my thoughts are mostly based on those two games. I have played a bit of MLB The Show '23 and Top Spin 2K25 and am planning on playing NHL 24 soon, but for the time being my thoughts in this post are about NBA 2K24 and FC24.

My biggest take away from playing these games is that they have absolutely nailed the television viewing experience. NBA 2K has a halftime show, on-court interviews, arenas that look different and have team-specific features, and on and on. In fact, the television experience is so good that it is almost a detriment to the game. I found myself frequently needing to skip past cutscenes and it felt like all of the extra scenes made the games a bit cumbersome to play through. You can't play through a game quickly because of all of the scenes. I looked for a way to turn this off and sadly didn't find that feature. It's an amazing presentation but is almost too good. 

FC24 is more subtle and doesn't feature the halftime show or cutscenes during period brakes or timeouts. This may be a feature of how soccer is played, however, as there are not nearly as many brakes in soccer matches as there are in basketball games. The announcing in both games is good, but in FC24 the announcing is especially good. When taking a free kick close to the goal, the announcer states that the kick is coming from "a spot of absolute menace" which is a fantastic line. The reporter Alex is a bit annoying, though, and I couldn't find a way to mute her. If a scoring opportunity happens when she is speaking, however, the announcers will cut her off to announce the game and allow her to continue once the scoring chance ends, which is pretty cool. 

Another trend that appears across the games is the complexity of the controls. No longer is there just a button to take a shot or pass the ball. Instead, there are multiple buttons depending on what type of shot or pass you want to take. For instance, there is a button for a lob shot and another button for a power shot. Admittedly, for someone who is new to modern sports games, this can be a bit intimidating at first. I found myself looking up the controls on a few occasions for both games. Once you get used to the more complicated controls, however, it makes the game that much better because it gives you quite a bit more control over the action.

I've been playing sports games on the PS5 over the past few months and overall have found them quite enjoyable. The one negative that also trends across most of the games is the complexity of the game menu system. No longer are there options for a season or exhibition game. You can play a season or individual game, but they are available in submenus that do not have obvious labels. I think a lot of this is to cater to online gaming and also the breadth of play modes that the games have these days, such as manager modes and individual player modes, not to mention online gaming. Regardless, I found it to be a bit confusing. Embarrassingly, I had to Google how to start a season for both games. Overall this is a minor complaint, and I've enjoyed getting back into the sports game scene. At the end of the last hockey season, I had some interest in getting back into hockey. I'm planning on spending some time playing NHL '24 next, which I'm looking forward to as it should be a good transition into watching hockey for this upcoming season.