Even with simplified grappling and submission controls carried over from the last edition, EA Sports UFC 3 is probably the least pick-up-and-play game in the sports genre. It takes real dedication, and understanding of one's fighter, to draw out the game's virtues. But they can be found in the anticlimax of a career bout that ends in a fraction of the time spent training for it. For those who can take a staggering punch and remain focused on their game plan, EA Sports UFC 3 is as close as it comes to professional fighting, without the bruises and welts.
NBA Live 18 is best for a very personal brand of basketball, focusing on a created superstar and the moves that make him stand out in a game that skews more toward individual play than teamwork.
Need For Speed Payback doesn't do many favors for itself. It's a fun racing game whose flashy story would be fine if I felt like I was building a blinged-out career worthy of it. Instead, I felt driven toward pure stats upgrades, heedless of what the car was or what it looked like.
At least it no longer plays or looks like an experiment gone wrong.
If the guts of the game are available, NBA 2K15 is the best sports title of the year, by a New York mile. The design choices at its edges — either needlessly making offline features dependent on online access, or insufficiently supporting the dedicated online modes — stain what is otherwise a role model for all sports video games.
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour falls far short of its predecessors
Drawn to Death fails the fundamentals
NBA Playgrounds stifles any above-the-rim action promised by placing condition after condition on the gameplay
Enemy Within adds a ton of new maps, mission types, and soldier abilities without losing the balance and unrelenting tension that make it XCOM.
The verdict, then, is that F1 22 should appeal to hardcore fans, who expect true-to-life fidelity in the vehicle performance, as well as more casually interested newcomers approaching this video game with a spectator’s curiosity. That blend of depth and accessibility is a hard needle for any sports developer to thread, and it rarely results in a transformative work. F1 22 isn’t one, but it didn’t need to be one — creating new cars, and the organic challenge of learning how to drive them on the limit, was transformation enough.
The distinctive parts of NBA Live 14 are buried deep and difficult to understand. The rest is hamstrung by overwhelmed player AI and underwhelming visuals.
R.B.I. Baseball 18 tries to be a fun arcade-style sports video game with some big features expected of so-called sim titles. And it winds up struggling with both goals.
Super Mega Baseball 2 feels like a true sequel: same cast of heroes and villains (lookin' at you, Andre Candela), some new threats and interlopers, and a new journey to enjoy.
Codemasters still delivers enough immersion and participation in this fantasy to keep it from feeling repetitive, even if on paper, it sounds like it should be.
After giving it a few days, I felt like I understood what Madden 19 was asking of me and that the challenge it posed was one worth growing into, and the game makes a strong and varied appeal to keep trying across its multiple deep modes of play.
FIFA 19's selling points may be subtle or incremental but, again, that's because the bedrock of this game has been so deep and so strong, for so long
The real fun of NBA Live 19 is out in The Streets, with my new friends from two different leagues, fitting together their styles with my star's, and then running that back all the way to 2 a.m.
Newcomers might surprise themselves how much they really can handle in a tough-as-nails driving sim
And, while the story-based campaign and leveling system provide plenty of thrills, it takes about 50 hours to actually get to the real shit. The endgame is where I can now choose between playing as a sniper, a bomber, or a non-specific character who can do a bit of everything, and join up with other super-achievers to take down a tougher gang called the Black Tusk.
Staples like Road to the Show and Diamond Dynasty, the card-collection/fantasy baseball suite now in its eighth year, are the two biggest reasons to pick up MLB The Show 19. They are brimming with variety and fun experiences both big and small.