[The Visualizer]

I feel it's been a really good year for sports games with most of the major sports having strong releases minus that joke of a NHL game.

NBA 2K15 has has some nice improvements, The Show was solid as usual and made a great debut on PS4, Madden made great strides and is easily the best Madden game ever released, UFC is pretty solid but missing some depth, and there have been a few standout racing games like Mario Kart, Driveclub and Forza Horizon 2, but FIFA 15 gets my vote.

The visuals and presentation saw nice improvements, all of the EPL teams stadiums are in and most of the league has their player likenesses on point. There have been so many little touches added to the game that go unnoticed that add to the immersion like players picking their heads up looking for targets in the box when in crossing situations, players putting their arms behind their backs when defending in the box and players pointing towards open areas directing traffic.

Online modes seem more stable, and the feature that allows you to immediate search for another game without requiring you to drop back to the menus or lobbies is a god send. Gameplay has been tightened up with the easy over-the-top throughballs issue from previous years finally being addressed, and passing and moving is much more responsive. Some extra layers of strategy are available now like default settings for corner kick plays and customizable player roles and behaviors you can adjust. The only real downside that I've noticed after hundreds of games is the marketed Goalkeeper A.I. improvements have some real issues that still need to be addressed, but nothing gamebreaking after they patched the exploitable near post goals in the first week or two. FIFA 15 is Sports GOTY for me.