2008 Sports Game of the Year

While Indie games seem to continue to struggle in finding their voice when it comes to Sport Games, there were certainly some memorable sport games this year, especially when it comes putting a bit of a different spin on them.

Wonder what we're talking about? Well let's just say that there are sporting experiences here that you won't find anywhere else. Read ON!

5th Place - Full Metal Soccer

Full Metal Soccer is the kind of game that gets better the more people that play it. Take soccer and add tanks. It's a simple recipe for a fresh combat-sports experience. Players take control of a tank on their team and then set to battle on a futuristic soccer field. Firing shells to knock the ball or opponents on the field and using a tractor beam to guide the ball around is a fun experience. It's a very different feel for a game typically needing fleet feet and delicate touch.

So, while it's good fun to to go barreling into your friends and punt a ball into the back of the net with the assistance of a high-velocity shell… you need friends to make the experience all it can be, as the game is currently without bots, and without a particularly robust on-line community. If you have the crew and the connection to play, though, this is good fun.

4th Place - Galactic Bowling

Galatic Bowling is the perfect amount of over the top. It's a game that frames a bowling competition as the solution to an intergalactic crisis of unimaginable proportions. It's pretty hard not to get on board with that kind of wacky.

This one's got more than a funky concept going for it, though. Galactic Bowling is a joy to look at. It's filled with sharp graphics and some wonderful character design (seriously, go to the website and look through the concept art, it's awesome). There are bunches of fun environments to play in, great powerups to use to crush your opponents and all the usual staples of a bowling game, executed just as properly as you'd want them to be.

Bowling's addictive enough on its own, the polish that Galactic Bowling gives to it makes it irresistible.

3rd Place - Trials 2 Second Edition

It's great to see a game that looks this good be this simple. Trials 2 has a really awesome gritty and organic feel to it… but it controls like you're back playing Excitebike on the NES. Too old school? Let's just say that you go forward, backward or you tilt forward or backward… and the rest is all up to how delicate you can be with things.

The tracks are gritty and the feel is rough. As you race through cobbled together tracks in a masterfully lit warehouse, the game will track how many bones you would have broken as you race – and crash – your way to the finish line. And, fiendishly tricky though the tracks may be, the simple controls ensure that you'll find your groove before too long… and then you're on your way to being a motocross superstar.

2nd Place - Tennis Elbow 2009

Tennis Elbow harkens back to the epic Dreamcast title, Virtua Tennis. A game that was hard to beat for playability, and therefore made for some fairly epic matches. Tennis Elbow has the same sort of siren call to the tennis aficionado. A game like tennis can be difficult to control without some complicated control set-up… and it's the kind of game where it seems that the precision placement would need a game controller.

Tennis Elbow makes controlling both your player and the ball an easy matter of keyboard control. The game has simple visual cues for where you should place yourself and a friendly training mode that will help you get the feel of how to place the ball precisely on the court. The bottom line, though, is that Tennis Elbow is a devilishly tricky and demanding tennis title sure to test the talents of any sports gaming fan.

2008 Sports Game of the Year - New Star Soccer 4

The New Star Soccer series is one of the real gems of Indie gaming. Actually scratch that. The New Star Soccer series is bar none some of the best sports gaming that you can find anywhere.

The core of the game revolves around taking a single player (yes, just one) from unknown struggling for a few spare minutes off the bench, to international superstar playing for one of the best teams in the world in addition to the national team in its pursuit of the World Cup.

The depth is staggeringly phenomenal. Leagues from every side of the country are included, with higher and lower leagues represented and the ability for you to make your club climb from one division to the next. Or, you can make yourself available for a transfer and try your luck on a different squad.

Even with all that, the depth of the game is just beginning. Players control every aspect of their player's life from how much money they spend, where they spend, and what they spend it on. The game includes casino cards and horse track racing, both of which are good enough to stand on their own as games, but here are just a fraction of a huge game. Relationships are also fully simulated from friends and family to teammates and the media, and you can even settle down with that special someone who you find and woo into becoming your wife and yeah, mother of your children.

It's a complete life sim built around an amazing soccer game. In building your character into a star, if you can step away from your girlfriend and the horse track long enough to do it, you'll be able to practice however you think is best and buy equipment to improve your abilities. Actual match play will also improve your skills, helping you turn your excited young naive player into a cool scoring machine. Or defensive stopper, or amazing goalie, or whatever you want them to be.

The games are a joy to play, though notably better with a joystick in hand, featuring a robust engine that has a lot of depth built around some basic game play simplicity. Shot angle and height can be precisely controlled after you've played for a bit in practice mode, where both your real and on-screen skills will benefit. (just be sure not to skip out on hanging with your teammates or you'll find they won't pass you the ball on the pitch!)

All in all, it's an amazing feet of game making that provides one of the most enjoyable and addictive sport games available. For all that, we one again give a new star soccer game our Sports Game of the Year award, and we're proud to do it!

Independent Sports Game of the Year Award History

History:
2008 - New Star Soccer 4
2007 - Reach
2006 - Motorama
2005 - New Star Soccer 3
2004 - RocketBowl
2003 - Tennis Critters

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By: Michael Scarpelli
Posted: Friday December 05, 2008