There were a couple of very interesting stories out of Kotaku this weekend, and one of them was a column asking the question
"Are Sports Games Worth Reviewing Any More?"
My answer is yes to this question. There are a variety of reasons why we should keep reviewing sports video games, but you have to keep a very specific criteria for these 'simulation' games. What is coming out of these same questions here at OS is a type of criteria we are developing to determine what a perfect sports game looks like, then scoring from 10 based off of those attributes.
First and foremost is realism and then also how the game plays. A game which plays with few or no flaws while also being 85-90% realistic is a game with perfect gameplay in our genre. A game with a presentation that looks and sounds like a real TV Broadcast (or like an actual game as if you were there) would be close to a perfect presentation. A game with modes which don't contain numerous experience killing bugs would be close to a perfectly designed game.
In a shorter form: Yes, sports games are still worth reviewing -- but you can't review them like any other genre of games.
Owen has a great point here in the sense of what do you compare these games to? Even in the criteria above -- we don't exactly have something concrete to compare reviewed games to. But that's largely the result of market forces coming to bear moreso than evil companies stealing everyone else's opportunities to develop licensed sports games.
What do you think?