Sports games should be reviewed differently

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.