OS Roundtable: Recapping a Generation of Individual Sports Games

[RaychelSnr]

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13

From Tiger Woods PGA Tour to Forza Motorsport, we've always tended to classify games which involved an individual effort into the same category for simplicity. However, Top Spin and UFC Undisputed couldn't be more different. Several staff writers take a look at this sub-genre and how it stacked up over the course of the last generation.

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[SHAKYR]

No Fight Night!?! I want to read what you had to say about that game.

[JohnDoe8865]

I was personally blown away by Fight Night Rd 3 when it came out. Graphically it was a showcase title and the boxing felt pretty good at the time. I was a huge Fight Night Round 4 fan. I thought that game was the greatest boxing game we got in this generation hands down. Did almost everything right in my opinion. I was less impressed with Fight Night Champion. I never really got into that one.

[Jet Sufferer]

Really think you guys are missing the boat on Tiger 14, they did revolutionize the game by simply making you NOT swing straight up and down anymore. This simple change brought the randomness and shot variety the series was crying for.

While 13 was fun, I was able to hit just about every fairway on PS3 and it was even easier on xbox where the stick has more of a "slot" for easy up and down swing shots.

The short game was improved greatly and you could pull of a variety of shots starting in 13 many of which were very satisfying, it has excellent "feel" in the short game, when you're in a groove you can get up and down like Mickelson, twitch a little and you'll hit a bad shot, good mechanic and fair.

As for the DLC model in 13 on the PS3 I got every single DLC course for free! Yes, free, from EA of all people! LOL

I predicted that was a one year miscalculation on their part and I was right, I subsequently got 14 for Xbox and bought all the DLC making it a $110 dollar game I believe, and I don't regret it one bit, unlike my unfortunate other purchases of a certain football game that shall remain nameless

[Feldman011teen]

To hell with your Forza praise.

[SHAKYR]

I was personally blown away by Fight Night Rd 3 when it came out. Graphically it was a showcase title and the boxing felt pretty good at the time. I was a huge Fight Night Round 4 fan. I thought that game was the greatest boxing game we got in this generation hands down. Did almost everything right in my opinion. I was less impressed with Fight Night Champion. I never really got into that one.

I'm a gameplay guy and none the Fight Nights had the core gameplay or boxing down right. All of them had much to desire as a huge gamer and boxing fan. Fight Night Champion had some great things in it but the story mode had taken away from giving the game a more polished feel. The tendency sliders was a great addition to the series but they were not responsive enough and the career mode got no real attention put in it.

[eye guy]

Fight Night Champion was garbage. They tried to simplify the controls by adding too much to the right stick, meaning the right stick only controlled your movement around the ring. No more user input for punching from angles.

Fight nought 2004 is still the best in the series imo...

Anyway, where were the mentions for Table Tennis? Stoked? Rugby League Live 2? Rugby Challenge? Honourable mentions I guess.

[rtkiii]

FN Round 4 was a great game. Played the crap out of that and I think it was the firs game where you could import faces... I thought that was a cool feature as well.

[pietasterp]

Golf games used to be pretty serious business, back in the days of Links on PC and PGA Tour, Nicklaus, etc... Now the genre is pretty much dead on the vine. I hope it's not a harbinger of things to come for sports games in general, but I still go back and play some of the PC Links games (and the single excellent original XBox offering) and then lament how far we haven't come in golf games. If only there were some competition out there somewhere...

[woody2goody]

UFC 3 is one of my favourite games - however the big mistake with that one was not using simulation stamina levels online. That could have removed 90% of the online idiots in one fell swoop, but they didn't do it, stuck with arcade and thus online was awful. What a great roster that game has - up there with WWE '13's roster for depth.

The Codies F1 games have had positives and negatives. F1 2010 was a very good foundation - nice graphics, decent AI and an enjoyable career mode - they lost their way in 2011 by not fixing the unequal online cars and also the game graphically was a disgrace on the PS3. 2012 was a lot better in many ways, most of all the handling, but still the framerates on PS3 were unacceptable when you see what GT5 or even GTA5 can produce on the same hardware. Probably won't get 2013 but I look forward to next-gen F1.

Top Spin 4 was very good, still some things need to be more random to make a great game of tennis. The worst thing was the roster. Tiny.

As for Fight Night, 4 was the best one. The story mode in Champion was very well done, but to me the Exhibition AI was broken - the CPU just punches too much and it's almost impossible to have a sim fight like you could on FNR4.

I have Tiger Woods '12 with all the DLC courses and to me, as golf changes a lot less than nearly every other sport in terms of players and venues, that game is all I need for my golfing fix. A great course selection, a nice roster of golfers and the freaking Masters means that even when next-gen comes along it will take something special to make me buy another golf game.

WWE '12 had very good in-ring gameplay but a poor story mode. WWE '13 had the one-count glitch but a very good mode with the Attitude Era and the best roster I've seen in any fighting game. The community creations - where you can download other users' created wrestlers is a gamechanger - when it works. THQ did build a solid foundation and with 2k at the helm fully from next year's game I expect great things from the wrestling series.

[misterkrabz]

The newer Tiger Woods games are not any more fun and don't do anything better than the games they released 5 years ago (or longer). Matter of fact, some of the older TW games are actually better IMO. Nothing "wow'd" me from year to year with that franchise.