There are some common tools that they all use for reviewing games no matter what the genre and the platform of the games are. Also there are some tiny details which makes a game great other than good or an all time classic other than great. Those tiny details that add up to the overall quality of the game are a real factor in making the game great or an all time classic.
What I mean is, whenever a RPG game comes out, you review it with common tools then genre-wise you dig deep and analyse if it`s a good RPG game or not by making comparison with all time RPGS games or the games with succesful formulas in the past. It is different for RPG games, FPS games , adventure games and etc.. And it should be different for sports games as well.
You may ask at this point :
Is it not ? Aren`t they reviewing them differently ?
I believe most of them are not, that`s why I come up with this blog post.
I don`t wanna bore you with psychological stuff but the main reason why many play video games is to have fun. However the fun factors comes from different things. Some like to just play, kill time and have fun no matter what. Some love to play and win, if they lose they don`t have fun. Some only have fun when they play co-op, some enjoy single player games. And for sports games, fun for me and for many comes out of realism.
A sports game is as fun as it is close to real.
By the way the sports game that I`m talking about are not arcade type sports game. I`m not talking about NBa Jam here, what I`m talking about is all those PES, FIFA, NBA 2K , NBA Live, NHL , Madden NFL, Top Spin, Virtua Tennis games. Those games always come up with the suggestion that they are the '' most realistic '' xxx game up to date ( xxx - tennis, basketball, football, soccer etc... )
So the guy who is reviewing a sports game MUST know the dynamics of that sport. He SHOULD know it. If a guy does not really know how to play soccer I do not trust his idea on a soccer game. I can not ! He would not know if the ball shouldn`t float that much in a situation or if a pass should not have gone like that or etc... When a game is suggesting that they are most realistic sports game up to date you should know that sport quite well to analyze it truly.
I`ll go step by step from now on.
* As I suggested above, the guy who is reviewing a sports game HAS TO know that sport well enough to analyze if it`s realistic or not.
* A sports game should be tested longer. To understand the dynamics of that sports game, you need to play at least 50 matches to really understand the flaws and positive sides of tha game.
* A sports game MUST BE played a lot of times against a human opponent before getting reviewed. The Cpu might be bad, or not sufficent, but if the game is offering you a great gameplay, with a human opponent it could turn out to be a classic. Don`t rely on games vs CPU that much.
* The guy who is reviewing the game must be knowledgeable enough to recognize the players, and decide if the attributes are close to real or if the game lacks licenced teams or players that should have been in the game considering their reputation.
* The ball... Look at it ! Look how it moves, look if moves like a baloon or not. The physics of the ball is very determinant in the success of a ball game.
* And again the attributes of a player. As an example: If a mediocre guy is scoring incredible points in a basketball game, making fadeaway jumpshots over defenders over and over again , i doubt it`s close to real. I mean if you don`t know much about basketball and if you play nba games, let`s say against dallas mavericks, when you see dirk nowitzki making those awkward shots you could come up with the idea that the game is not realistic. That game is realistic indeed but as you don`t know how Dirk is doing in the real world you could have or they could have - the guy who is reviewing the game or playing the game- come up with the idea that the game is not close to real.
To sum up, I do not rely much on the sports game reviews as the most important that I look for in a sports game is realism and I do not believe most of the guys who are reviewing those games have sufficient knowledge about the game itself, players or the clubs to have a verdict on the realism of the game.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
I agree with most of what you said, but there's a problem with 2 of your main points (mainly the "sports games should be tested longer" and that reviewers ought to play the game a number of time against CPU and human players) because most of the initial reviews that come out for any game are rushed, and I'd say that particularly for sports games, because you can find most of what you'd like to mention in just a couple of matches at best.
To be honest myself I barely read reviews for games these days because I think the whole system is just a mess (such as reviewers rushing games through just so they can write up a review and go "FIRST!!!", but especially with sports games I just don't even bother. I mean I saw FIFA 10 and 11 get 9's and 10's all across the board and after playing over 500 games online in 09 and a good few hundred in 10 too, I could tell just after a few in FIFA 11 that there were barely any differences between the lot (apart from players and kits being updated obviously). I for a chuckle would read some here and there and almost all mentioned the "new" passing system and other blather that apparently made the game different from the previous ones that EA came up with coming up to the release of the game but that didn't exist.
Tl;dr: Good review, and I agree, but the current review system means people that rush out poor and undeveloped reviews get more attention than those that take their time with the game and know it better than others so that they can take their time with their reviews and write them better.
I agree with you totally. I hope they realize sooner than later that the "MOST ACCURATE" is better than the "FIRST"
There is a problem with your request. This may be an extreme example, but an ultra-realistic game may not always equate to fun. You could have the most realistic sports game to ever grace mankind, but if it's not any fun to play, then it really doesn't matter. I see your point, though, and this was an interesting blog. You just need to watch out for those little punctuation and capitalization errors.
Maybe sports games shouldnt be reviewed differently.
Maybe sports games should upgrade like real sequels do and be held at the same standard.
Right now the only sports title I see with great improvements each year is the NHL franchise and FIFA in a way.
NHL is moving towards the future with online seasons that allow 6v6 play, while Madden offers a gimmicky feature that ends up being removed the following year.