Sports Games - General Question

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Other than maybe a little golf 15-20 years ago, I can't recall playing any sports games since the Atari days.

I just have a general question about how they are played. I guess I'm specifically asking about American football. I've seen bits of how they are played in movies and TV shows. It appears that you select from a list of preset plays and formations, and your opponent does the same. Does the game then pretty much play itself, or is there still a lot of interaction? And then a followup question, if there are 10s or 100s of predefined plays/formations, does it come down to just a few that really work?

Just kind of wondering how much those games are rinse & repeat (not unlike ED, but with less variety).

[Darwin]

Alas, the last sports game I played was Daley Thompsons Decathlon on the ZX Spectrum.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Alas, the last sports game I played was Daley Thompsons Decathlon on the ZX Spectrum.

Yeah, that's the stuff. I think it was a Winter Olympics game for me - I remember skiing.

[FCB1891]

Other than maybe a little golf 15-20 years ago, I can't recall playing any sports games since the Atari days.

I just have a general question about how they are played. I guess I'm specifically asking about American football. I've seen bits of how they are played in movies and TV shows. It appears that you select from a list of preset plays and formations, and your opponent does the same. Does the game then pretty much play itself, or is there still a lot of interaction? And then a followup question, if there are 10s or 100s of predefined plays/formations, does it come down to just a few that really work?

Just kind of wondering how much those games are rinse & repeat (not unlike ED, but with less variety).

Well, there's different kinds of sports games. I'm speaking from a soccer point of view, but I guess it can be applied to most team sport games.

First off, you can choose to play games where you are not directly in control of the players. Here it would be up to you to choose the right players, tactics (offence, defence, passing style, etc) and let the game determine the outcome based on these decisions. Football manager is a good example of this.

Another option is that on top of the above, you also control your players during the game (you can switch between players, have them make specific runs etc.). Here you obviously have a more direct impact on the outcome. Madden NFL or FIFA (for soccer) are good examples of these.

In both cases, however, there are variables you do not control (opponent form, "luck", ...).

Like you said, although there are a lot of ways to play a game, some will be more succesful than others, partly because they are more effective against your opponent's style of play, but also because some tactics are OP. Compare it with different ship loadouts in ED, some will be better than others and will more likely be chosen by players.

Hope this helps a bit.

[TorTorden]

I dont play sports games since they pretty much they suck ass, and has hardly changed apart from graphical fidelity since the 80's.
and of course is the quint essential EA crap, of annually pushed out titles.

Most of what I remember from some fifa game was, 1 button for passing, another for shooting at goal, another switching between players, and of course some weird commands hardly anyone used that would put old arcade cheatcodes to shame.

[Cmdr Kharma]

Ohhhh I used to love the "Track And Field" arcade game........

Button mashing with timing......