Sports Gaming News Weekly Wrap-Up (Mar 21 - Mar 27, 2021)

Over the weekend, Steel City Interactive unveiled a huge cast of new boxers in a special event. Prince tackles this major ESBC roster update in this video. Terence Crawford highlights the list of active fighters, while we see the surprising inclusion of Roy Jones Jr. as well.

Following up on the top five college basketball games of all time, Matt is back once again to hit on five things the next college basketball game must have to succeed.

There is instantaneous feedback now with the new physics, and whether you’re approaching an S curve, a sweeping curve, or bunched up with a group of opponents, the MotoGP 21 lets you realize and understand if you’re being too aggressive, not being aggressive enough, or if you’ve nailed that turn perfectly. Obviously, it’s early on and there’s still some tweaking that will take place regarding the bike’s physics. Even at this stage of development, there is a subtle but noticeable difference in the way the bikes handle overall while on the track, and it’s for the better.

One of the advantages of having a stranglehold on licenses is that authentic stadiums usually come along with them. As EA has focused its efforts on England, Spain, and Germany, more and more stadiums have been added to the series. Immersion in sports games plays a huge role, and while fans are not back in stadiums just yet, they’re represented in FIFA 21. These fans also help to break up the monotony that often comes with playing in generic stadiums. A big match on the road where you’re not only facing the opposition, but also thousands of passionate supporters with their own stadium sounds, can help make matches feel bigger. It’s with that in mind that I present my top five favorite FIFA 21 next-gen stadiums.

In many ways, it’s harder than ever to try to predict player ratings in MLB The Show 21. Considering how shortened the 2020 season was, there’s the lingering question of how much trust the developers at SDS will put into a season with a smaller sample size. Will they still just go with the aggregate of the last three years (with a weighted impact towards last season), or will they instead take more of a four-year look and count last year as a bit of an anomaly?

On Monday, San Diego Studio released the first full gameplay hype trailer of the year for MLB The Show 21. This trailer was created on next-generation hardware and provided some sneak peaks into upgrades the game has received, as well as teased a new legend the community has been clamoring for, Roberto Clemente.

From the developers of the popular racing simulation Project CARS comes Project CARS GO. This is a mobile game that is looking to bring the console experience to the fingers and freedom of your phone while retaining the simulation and fun that the Project CARS franchise is known for in its mainline series. I had a chance to speak with lead developer Joe Barron of Slightly Mad Studios for this Project CARS GO interview.

“Is Madden Share down for anyone else?” is a question that unfortunately seems to pop up all too often in the Madden forums here on OS. To its credit, Madden Share has been more stable than in the past, but this March/April timeframe is really when it seems to go through the most issues – or at least it’s when the issues become the most obvious.

I always try to highlight Matt10 and the community’s work at interim points, and it’s long past time to highlight the final OS Community slider set for FIFA 21 for the year. The issues with FIFA 21 have been well covered at this point — at least as it relates to the AI — in my prior explanation of these sliders, so I won’t go into the same depth here. But, in short, the CPU does not cross the ball enough (or at all at times), and the central midfielders do not track back enough.

One of the legends of the NBA 2K roster creator community on OS is jeb4056. He has been making custom draft classes for NBA 2K since NBA 2K18, and he finished the sixth (full) class of the year just a month ago. I figure with March Madness in the air, it might be a good time to highlight all his hard work as people start to think more about the NBA draft. Of course, none of these players are real, but OS community members have been crushing it with fictional rosters across multiple games the last couple years — and this is more of the same.

If you’re simply looking for free agents and a Madden 21 roster that is mimicking the ongoing offseason, I have already covered options for the Xbox and PlayStation consoles. However, if you’re looking for an experience that may alter the gameplay more than by simply changing around personnel, then might I recommend StayODD‘s Madden 21 custom roster that is built around performance-based ratings adjustments. The adjustments carried on through to the end of the normal season, and the same goes for the depth charts.

Seasons 4 and 5 were a lot of fun, but they were also just a lot. Some of it was worth the grind (Kawhi and D-Rob, or the Age of Heroes freebie cards), while some wasn’t (sorry Russ), but as the saying goes — it’s all about the journey, not the destination. Okay, that’s not entirely true. When it comes to sports, it’s essentially all about the destination, as long as that destination results in a win.

Whether you want to call it a “leak” or just a nice little planned teaser by EA, it seems we are getting coordinators back in Madden 22 in the form of “staff management” and whatever that may include. Since that news broke back at the start of March, some folks on the forums have been thinking more about coordinators in the NFL game. The thing that has cracked me up the most is forum user TheButter peddling this one image over and over again in various threads.

While franchise mode carryover saves will be going bye-bye for this first PS5 version of MLB The Show 21, the hope is the roster vault and such will live on and continue to carry on into the next-gen games. If the roster vault gets reset, then there are going to be folks who will stick with the PS4 version of The Show because the amount of community creations that are still uncovered here is insane. One roster that was brought to my attention a little over a month ago was the Strat-O-Matic ’80s roster from htskr21.

Thursday’s feature premiere from San Diego Studio revolved around Road to the Show and the Ballplayer feature coming to MLB The Show 21. Maybe the biggest takeaway from the entire showcase was that your Road to the Show Ballplayer will be utilized across several game modes in several new ways, while the single-player component has a richer dynamic story path.

As if to fulfill some sort of legal obligation that all games need to at least attempt to implement some sort of battle royale mode, PGA Tour 2K21 introduced a new Divot Derby mode recently. In this mode, players try to shoot a round of speed golf faster than 19 other opponents. The slowest players gradually get eliminated over the course of nine holes or until there’s only one golfer remaining to be crowned as the speediest on the course. You can even bring in your own party of four if you want you can earn bragging rights (or some real money if you prefer) over your friends.