OS Weekly Wrap Up, Getting You Caught Up on Sports Gaming News (Sep 27 - Oct 3, 2020)

Sometimes low expectations are the best thing that can happen to a game. Consider Tennis World Tour 2, for example, the follow-up to the disappointing original that can’t help but benefit from avoiding any comparison to that sub-par release. With a new developer on board in Big Ant Studios (oddly enough, the same studio behind the gaming world’s other big tennis title, AO Tennis 2), it has to be considered monumental progress that TWT2 simply feels like a finished game this time around.

It’s that time of the year again. You know, the one where you’re excited to get the first crack at management in career mode. If you’re like me, you’ve been reading all of the exciting news about the changes to career mode and counting down the days until you take over the club of your choosing. Add in some early footy action across Europe and the US, and the search for who you’ll be managing has become a bit of a sport all its own for me. In addition to this, EA has recently released ~1,000 player ratings so you can start to get a feel for your team and players. With this in mind, let’s look at some of the most exciting teams and biggest challenges you’ll face in the FIFA 21 career mode.

At this point, you’ve either gotten a good grasp of your shot using your preferred aiming/meter/no meter method (at least maybe until the latest patch changed things a bit today), or you’re still struggling to hit shots consistently. To add to the fun (or annoyance) of shooting, is a “new” discovery that has been exposed by and within the 2K community. Some players are being accused of using modded controllers or the Cronus Zen device, which apparently allows players to consistently hit green lights. And I say this is a “new” discovery because this NBA 2K21 modded controller mess is only new in the sense that it’s getting more attention. “Perfect” green releases were able to be accomplished with the shot timing before this as well, but the new aiming method has put a whole new focus on the problem.

In preparation for the release of NHL 21, the development team over at EA Sports has begun to share — through Instagram @easportsnhl — their player ratings and attributes for the upcoming NHL 21. These NHL 21 ratings reactions have included a high level of criticism from fans and critics of the series. I like many others have found myself in disbelief over the last couple days — especially when it comes to EA’s list of “Top 10 Deking” players, which I’ll dive into later.

FIFA 21 officially releases on October 6, but you can already find the game out in the wild on Twitch and YouTube. We received our review copy today as well so KG will now begin the process of reviewing the game to try and get it out by release day. Prince also has a video here that runs through most of the high-level stuff you need to know if you’re looking at this year’s game.

With the current landscape still void of college football video games, the folks at Canuck Play and Spear Interactive are doing their best to satiate that need. Their general plan of action seems to be to try and deliver a wholly customizable game that allows its fans to create their own world, with the inclusion of multiple league structures provided in the game itself. There have been some much-needed improvements in this year’s game, most notably the partnership with Unity to help enhance the core infrastructure of the game. This partnership includes improvements to the game performance, lighting system, player movement, object avoidance and custom receiver animations. All of this is obviously welcomed, but still, the results need to show on the field for Maximum Football to continue to grow its base, which is integral to the future of the title. So let’s hop into this Doug Flutie’s Maximum Football 2020 review.

The basic premise was that a lot of the high-level issues talked about for why folks think microtransactions are problematic are valid but misunderstood in a sense, especially in the sports gaming space. Companies nowadays spend so much time saying “we’re not pay to win” or that any microtransactions will be “purely cosmetic” and that’s great. But when it comes to sports games, and especially NBA 2K21, the pay-to-win nature is not really the biggest issue to me. Instead, it’s the antagonism along the way and lack of foresight that arises from changes to the game itself. NBA 2K21 microtransactions suck — as do most microtransactions overall — but they suck for smaller reasons that just poke you over and over again until you finally want to burst.