I have always played sports games cause I love sports. I just haven't bought any in a long time cause well I am low on funds and I much rather have an action game than a sports game. But they can be great experiences, games that you can put in 100 hours easily.
By far my favorite sport is football (US, also known as the good kind 
) and so my favorite sports game is of course football. But I was a big fan of 2k, ever since the DC I was buying 2K games, Madden was ok but it didn't feel right. Then EA went full asshole mode and i have been on a football game strike ever since, I bought the All Pro 2k game but that was basically 2K5 in new skin.
Basketball, baseball and hockey are all fun but something I would probably only buy when I have money lying around. The MLB for the PS3 in particular is amazing, I loved the demo.
I don't like to watch real-life sports. I do like to play 9 holes of golf occasionally with a friend of mine.
As far as video game sports, the only ones I like are arcade racing and snowboarding titles. Wii Sports Tennis is fun too. I hate sport sims, though.
The best videogame sport is tennis. Think about it, it takes place on a single screen (so therefore none of this splitscreen bs) and it is therefore perfect for on the couch multi-player. Plus Tennis has easy to pick up rules and has none of the crazy random things.
P.S. American Football sucks harder than Kirby in a porn convention!
I pretty much gave up sports games after the N64 but I used to buy soccer and hockey and american football the lot on genesis and SNES. I'm not a big sports fan, used to love NBA Jam though.
These days the only sports games I enjoy are golf or tennis. Tennis for the immediacy and golf for the strategy and laid back feel.
Stuff like Tennis games, Boxing games, Snowboarding games- that's really the only sports games I'll sink my teeth into.
Though the only one I play year in, year out are the Tiger Woods PGA games. Fun stuff. It's the only time I'll tolerate golf.
Unfortunately, every hockey or baseball game just hits a point where I'm so utterly dominant that it becomes pointless to play anymore.
And inherent trait to sports games is that each match is wholly encaptulated, like a multiplayer game. You get a full experience from start to finish in a period of ~30 minutes. Add on top of that a greater goal and you have a unique combination that can't be found elsewhere.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
I love baseball, tennis, basketball and golf games (and NFL Blitz). Not to the extent that I play them over the other genres of games, but still, I see their appeal and I do play them and enjoy them.
Many people are pretty snide about sports games, that's understandable, a lot of people in our technically-prone of hobbies don't get the randomness of sport. I was like 25 before I even noticed spectator sport, so I can relate.
In any case, before this turns into a blog post, I am, for the first time, playing a "Season Mode" of a game, where you take a single team through an entire simulation of a sports season. In some ways I hate it, but in other ways, particularly when it comes down to scoring the winning point in the waning moments of a game I find it quite addictive.
So anyway, c'mon want to know about those of you who do play sports games? Which ones should I try and what appeals to you about them?