The OS Year-End Awards: Best New Feature of 2014

[RaychelSnr]

2014 brought many new features in sports gaming, and with you, the OS readers, crowning the Year to Year saves in MLB 14 The Show as their winner — we now turn our attention to the staff voting.

Unlike previous years, we are awarding our end of the year awards with a Gold, Silver, Bronze method — and staff voting was done in that way as well. First place votes were worth three points, second place votes were worth two points, and third place votes worth a single point. We tabulated the results from our writing staff to come up with the winner of this year’s best new feature award category. Let’s get to the winners:

Gold - The Golf Club’s Course Creation Suite

The ability to easily create high quality, detailed courses in The Golf Club is one of the most innovative new features to come into sports video games in years. This is the equivalent of building your own ballparks in MLB 14 The Show, with the ability to determine how the game is played and what kind of results people will get. It was incredibly addictive to put together courses and then see how people’s play would react to your creation. Half SimGolf, half Tiger Woods PGA Tour, fully a whole lot of fun.

Silver - Year to Year Saves in MLB 14 The Show

The readers chose this feature as their top new feature of 2014. We were similarly impressed with this feature, as it is the first of its kind in sports gaming (at least in recent memory in major titles). This was actually a rather close race with the gold medal winner from The Golf Club.

Bronze - NBA 2K15’s Face Scanning Technology

Perhaps the most controversial of today’s six picks, the face scanning technology has had moments it hasn’t worked so well (especially for XB1 users). However, when it works, you have the ability to have a high quality and detailed facial recreation of yourself in the game’s various modes. There have been similar features in the past, but nothing comes close to replicating faces like NBA 2K15’s technology. For this reason, it’s the staff’s bronze medal winner.

What do you think about our picks for the best new features of 2014? We definitely differ from the readers with two picks the readers didn’t also have. Sound off in the comments!

[bcruise]

Looks like Golf Club will do better on the Staff votes than I expected.

All 3 of those are great features. I wish I could have used the face-scanning on the PC.

[Simple Mathematics]

I think Super Mega Baseball's ego system is underrated. Every game could benefit from installing this system for difficulty.

[threattonature]

I strongly disagree on the Face Scanning Technology having better results than anything previous. EA's Gameface in Fight Night created much better results than I've been able to achieve with 2K15's Face Scanning. Good list overall though.

[kingdavidtaylor1989]

Quote: Originally Posted by threattonature

I strongly disagree on the Face Scanning Technology having better results than anything previous. EA's Gameface in Fight Night created much better results than I've been able to achieve with 2K15's Face Scanning. Good list overall though.

Ummmmmm NO. Game face was crappy. The guy I had on fight night looked NOTHING like me. NBA 2K15 player scan definitely has more detail. https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/10861081_329771217211020_6354769041324899067_o.jpg