Every year we hear about all these grand improvements being made in sports games. More times than not, though, these improvements are minimal at best. Remember all of the speculation and excitement before this generation of consoles began? The Madden target videos, Ray Allen dripping sweat, and the promise of "next-gen" physics and gameplay had everyone excited.

Now, years later, it is time to actually take a step forward. Strides have been made year to year, but these are three things that must be standard in sports video games in '09. Even though Christmas has yet to pass, it is never too early to talk New Year's Resolutions. These are sports-gaming's New Year’s Resolutions for 2009.

Improved Create-A-Player/Face Mapping

We have EASHL, Road To The Show, Be A Pro and The Life. Career modes are all the rage these days and they are still just getting off the ground. But I would like to know, who are we really playing as? Sometimes you are given a dozen or so generic faces, you toss on a beard and change your eye color, and that is supposed to be you.

Other times, developers let you edit every single piece of the face. It is a tedious process that takes 20 minutes longer than the previous way, and you still have a guy who ends up looking nothing like you.

Tony Hawk’s Underground had a feature in it that was way ahead of its time. You could take a picture of your face and submit it to developer Neversoft, and then those folks over there would send you a code that you could use in the game. When you input the code, your face would pop up on screen and you could map it to the player in the game. That game came out in 2003 for the PS2.

Now in 2008, this can be easily pulled off on both the 360 and PS3. You can save pictures on your hard drive or simply take a fresh picture and import it into the game. The bottom line is, if Tiger Woods can do it so can every other game. I always wanted to play as myself in a sports game and now there is no excuse not to be able to.

NCAA Roster Updates?  At least more accurate rosters?

Frequent Roster Updates

Remember the last few NBA 2K games where you would get a roster update once a month or so? That is unacceptable. I know this year’s batch of games have largely rectified this problem, but rosters still need to be continually updated. Things are happening every day in the MLB and NBA and the video games should reflect that.

Last year, I thought MLB 08: The Show did a great job taking care of this for the most part. Every Monday a new update was out, and in it the developers gave gamers a list of every move they made in the game. I always knew I was playing with the most up-to-date rosters when I popped in The Show.

Another thing about these updates is that they should be loaded automatically. I do not want to spend 10 minutes figuring out if I picked the right roster, only to have to back out of my current game when I figure out it is not correct. As consumers, we should not have to worry about whether the product is up-to-date; It should be automatic.

Now that almost every home console is connected online, the major game developers need to be aware of that fact. NBA Live 365 is the first big step in that direction, now everyone else should take notice.

What is this mess?  We need simpler controls!

Simplicity

I was playing Major League Baseball 2K8 in a store the other day with a friend of mine. I was vaguely familiar with the game, but he was not, and it showed; His three batters struck out swinging after only nine combined pitches. It was my turn to bat, and after playing the other versions a whole lot, I thought I would fare better. Turns out the best I could do was fly out to right field.

This is the difference between MLB 2K8 and MLB 08. Anybody can pick up and play MLB 08, while MLB 2K8 is confusing even for longtime sports-game players. That is a huge reason why MLB '08 outsells 2K8 on the PS3.

Now, I am not saying that all games should have some kind of All-Play mode attached to it, but a game should not be so complicated that it alienates almost everybody. If you look at the most successful sports games, you will notice that all of them can be played by almost anybody. A game like NBA 2K9 is not geared toward rookies, but anybody can join in and have some fun dunking on a friend.

There is enough money spent on these games that they can be tailored toward every crowd. Why would anybody want to buy a game that they cannot even have fun with at a store kiosk? I know developers know this, but they need to act on it too.

Take notice, this is only part one of the sports-gaming New Year’s Resolutions. Next time I will be covering the other sports games that are not about teams, like wrestling and boxing.


Have you ever bought a game that you played strictly in the store? Do you want your face in the game? Do you spend way too much time updating your own rosters? Let your voice be heard in the comment box below.