OS Weekly Wrap Up, Getting You Caught Up on Sports Gaming News (Jul 12 - Jul 18, 2020)

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Every Sunday, we will get you caught up on the sports gaming news you might have missed, during the busy week. This includes the latest videos from our content team and featured articles from the staff.

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Operation Sports Videos

Alex hits us with an awesome NBA restart in NBA 2K20 montage of the Los Angeles Lakers going up against the Los Angeles Clippers as they prepare to open the NBA season back up on on July 30. It’s still hard to tell if the NBA restart will work out and lead to a fitting conclusion for the season, but if it does, the Lakers and Clippers could be a big part of whatever story plays out in the Western Conference.

EA Sports UFC 4 is set to release on August 14 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on August 7 for EA Access subscribers. On July 11, the first trailer was released giving us more details, features and roster info. Take a look at the video from Prince wrapping up all of the news from this past weekend.

Brian checks in today giving a bit more insight and feelings on the Madden 21 top 10 QB ratings that were recently revealed. We also have little more info now with the top 5 fastest QBs and top 10 strongest arms as well.

The Madden 21 top 10 ratings are still in flux right now (we do have some official ones), but Madden School has posted the top 10 players from each team as of now. Brian thought it would be fun to go over some of the ratings and break them down at this point.

As we continue towards the September 18 release date, Brian is here to run through some of the latest WWE 2K Battlegrounds info in his latest video.

Matt checks in today on the heels of a EA Sports UFC 4 beta that I would say had more detractors than champions at this point on OS. That being said, there’s still a lot we don’t really know about this game, and with not much time before release, Matt wanted to put out a UFC 4 top 5 features video where he discusses some of the things he still hopes make it into the game.

Operation Sports Featured Articles

Part one of my three-part series attacked controlling the green jersey. In part two, we discovered the necessary strategy for controlling the polka dot jersey. Each of those challenges has their own unique strategies and methods to control them through Paris. In part three of this Tour de France 2020 guide, we take a look at the most important jersey on the Tour de France, the yellow jersey. Also known in French as the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey is the most prestigious jersey in the world of cycling.

Baseball is a team sport. Of course, if you play MLB The Show 20 or any of its previous iterations, that might not be entirely clear considering it’s the last of the AAA sports titles without some sort of way to link up with others to play games unless it’s against each other. Granted, it’s not exactly feasible for developers to spend valuable resources creating a full 9-vs-9 MLB The Show online team play user experience that would perhaps thrill only a niche of hardcore baseball purists. But by now, even Madden has figured out a way to allow people to play together by focusing on the skill positions. So how can MLB The Show do the same?

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As an avid golfer, I’ve always been intrigued by the at-home golfing simulators. I received the PhiGolf simulator for Father’s Day this year from my wife and kids. It was a pleasant surprise as I’ve seen this in stores, but I was always skeptical regarding its accuracy and feel. For those who aren’t familiar with this new toy, it gives you a chance to play World Golf Tour by swinging a club instead of timing the buttons.

I have previously featured this NBA 50 roster from DCAllAmerican and Hyperballer two times because it’s more than just an NBA 2K20 custom roster. It’s a whole league that also includes attributes, badges, tendencies, play types, vitals, signature dunks, dribbles, coach profiles and points of emphasis to try and bring out the style and individuality of each player and team from each era. This NBA 2K20 roster for Xbox One has it all. The only sad part is it is just for Xbox One.

NBA 2K20 is free for PlayStation Plus users until August 3. For PlayStation 4 owners, this is a noteworthy inclusion because Xbox owners were the only ones who got the chance to play the game for free last year. For 2K fans, this is the first time that an entry has been free for PS4 owners since it was a free game back in June 2016 for NBA 2K16.

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In part two of this two-part series, we’ll examine what things FIFA could steal from PES. If you missed part one where I talked about what PES can steal from FIFA, you can check it out here.

If the news about a truncated MLB the season not being transferred to franchise mode in MLB The Show 20 has you down, then why not just pretend you’re creating your own league this year instead? Bacon’s fictional roster received a substantial update at the beginning of July, and I bring it up now because it’s now confirmed we’re not going to be able to mimic a real MLB season this year no matter what. So why bother trying? Instead, let’s go to fantasy land.

For years, fans have been waiting for an NFL Street-type game mode to find its way back to Madden. So when a recent leak showed off a unique game mode labeled The Yard in Madden 21, fans took notice — for better or worse. On the surface, it may seem like EA is responding to news that 2K would be releasing a non-sim NFL video game. But the more logical conclusion is that once Volta was introduced in FIFA 20, it was only a matter of time before something like it found its way into EA’s NFL franchise. After all, FIFA and Madden have also mimicked each other in terms of transitioning to Frostbite and story-driven career modes one after each other. That being said, let’s take a look at Madden’s newest game mode and theorize about The Yard.

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The long-standing rumors of PES 2021 being a Season Update have finally been confirmed. This is a bold move by Konami to make a PES 2021 Season Update rather than a full-blown sequel, especially considering that their rival EA Sports have the majority of the footy market and possess the kind of deep pockets to seamlessly transition into the next generation of consoles. Let’s examine how this move could play out.

Is it just a quality vs. quantity situation? Like spitting out too much content makes each drop suffer in quality? Or maybe since 2K21 is less than two months away, the MyTeam team is just so busy that it’s easier to recycle cards or plug random players into Flash or Buzzer Beater sets rather than come up with a solid theme set?

Let’s travel way back to November 22, 2005. This was the day the Xbox 360 launched in the United States. It launched with 14 games in North America. One of those games was the now infamous Madden NFL 06. Before that fateful day, we had geared up for HD Madden by seeing a next-gen trailer showing a snow game with the Eagles vs. the Giants. This created so much hype in the Madden community just a year after finding out we would no longer be getting any NFL 2K games.

If there is anything else you would like to see in the OS weekly wrap-up, feel free to let us know in this post. Otherwise, we will see you next Sunday.

Author
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Steve Noah
Steve is the Editor in Chief at Operation Sports. He's been here since the year 2000 posting news, features and interviews, along with keeping the hardcore sports gaming community alive and well for over two decades. He covers almost every game related to sports but enjoys basketball, football and baseball games the most.