Setting the ground rules: What makes a good sports game?

Would you play a game if you didn't know the rules? No. Calvinball is, of course, excepted. So why try and jabber on about sports video games without defining what makes a good one?

We've got to set down the criteria, and here's what's proposed: A good sports video game has both good controls and good atmosphere. Both categories encompass a wide range of aspects to a very good video game, and when trying to decide on the criteria to set down in this post, we seriously could not think of a good sports video game that didn't have both in spades.

Control covers not only how players react and handle when playing a game, but how much sense the menu system makes, and how intuitive it is to make changes and have them register. We take slight offense to the byzantine menu system in some of 2K Sports' games, NBA 2K8 and MLB 2K8 from this past year standing out as games that try to pick a fight with a user who just wants to change the damn roster. EA Sports' products have been guilty of this in the past, too, in all fairness, but we cannot remember ever being more frustrated by a player being injured than in our NBA 2K8 franchise - not only was a player out, but it meant we had to wrestle against the retarded computer to craft a lineup.

Good in-game control should be pretty self explanatory - the on-screen players do not fight against the wishes of the user or suffer from any sort of input lag. The move queue doesn't stack up too greatly and give the game a mind of its own. In short, you press X, and the game does what it should. The controls are laid out sensibly, and when you run, it feels like it's on grass, not through a mud pit - unless that's what the conditions call for. If you go up for a slam dunk playing basketball, you feel it; if you connect on a 60-yard touchdown pass, or get score a screaming 25-yard free kick, you just know it before it goes in. Sports works this way in real life; the best sports games replicate this feel.

Atmosphere covers the visuals, audio, and non-tactile feel of the game. Are there cardboard cutouts watching your title match, or is there an actual crowd? Does that crowd sound deader than an NBA arena, or is there passion? Do the menus present the game well and help you reach your goal - whether that's changing lineups, options, or selecting a play? Does the game look good - sharp graphics, realistic animations? Does your game of football look like an NFL Network re-run, or a muddy web cam? Do the players have canned animations, or do they move like they should?

Atmosphere is how much you feel like you're in the game; control is how well you can control it. Combine these two factors, and you've got most superb sports video games:

-EA Sports' NCAA 09? An example of a game that *does* work, in our opinion. College anthems blare from the menus, the play calling and in-game controls work wonderfully, and the animations have improved from years past. This is a good sports game.

-EA Sports' FIFA 08? It certainly looks better, has better audio than it's competitor from Konami, and has decent presentation; however, the game still doesn't animate as well as the Pro Evo Soccer/Winning Eleven series, and we don't get the feeling of a real game of soccer, but instead a virtual game of foosball. Whereas the AI and plays happening in games like Madden or NCAA are getting more and more realistic, FIFA still stays bland. It's not a horrible sports game, but it's not excellent.

Sure, there are other factors - online play, licenses, modes and features available, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. However, if we were to sit down and start a quick match against the CPU or an opponent, the elements that matter are control and atmosphere. It encompasses most everything needed, and anything it doesn't is ancillary.