2020 has been a tough year for sports. Lockdowns have been imposed in most countries and major sporting events have had to be canceled, like UEFA Euro 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics. Thankfully, this year has also seen a multitude of excellent new sporting video games which have helped fill the void.
Gaming’s sports genre is in an odd place at the moment; franchises that used to dominate these lists like FIFA, NBA2K, and WWE have all been criticized by both fans and reviewers for many years now. This opportunity for other developers to take the limelight hasn’t been squandered, and this year’s list of great sports games according to Metacritic is more diverse as a result.
10 EA Sports UFC 4 (82)
Mixed martial arts is so synonymous with the UFC brand that, commendably to Dana White, many people mistake UFC as the title of the sport itself. MMA was known as the world’s faster-growing sport for many years, though it has now reached the heights it always had the potential to soar to.
Industry giants EA recently signed a 10-year deal to continue making UFC games, and with the success of UFC 4, it’s easy to see why. The latest game offered an excellent revamped combat system along with the great new online mode Blitz Battle.
9 WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship (83)
2020 was a great year for motorsport games, and WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship was one of the best releases. WRC 9 offers a fleshed out career mode that has surprising levels of depth, as well as some of the best car handling mechanics in the genre.
The game didn’t disappoint in key areas like its excellent sense of speed and enjoyable multiplayer, although it did fall somewhat short with its sound and visual design.
8 DIRT 5 (83)
Codemasters have been a cornerstone of the racing genre for multiple decades, thanks in no small part to their DIRT series which replaced the Colin McRae Rally series after Colin McRae’s untimely passing.
Codemasters didn’t try to reinvent the wheel with Dirt 5 and kept the core mechanics similar to its previous iterations. The off-road racing game continued to offer more arcade-like gameplay than its competitors, a niche that it continues to excel in.
7 MLB The Show 20 (83)
Despite not having the worldwide popularity of soccer or basketball, there have been multiple baseball releases in 2020, and (spoiler alert) MLB The Show is just one of two that appear on this list.
San Diego Studio and Sony Computer Entertainment teamed up again for their latest yearly MLB release and the game didn’t disappoint. Implementing significant improvements to yearly releases is never an easy task for developers, but San Diego Studio’s managed it with the game’s new and improved fielding mechanics.
6 What The Golf? (84)
Much like the FIFA and NBA2K franchises, there was once a time when golf was a mainstay in lists such as these. The Tiger Woods series provided a plethora of fantastic golfing titles, including Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 which received a whopping 92 score on Metacritic. The sport has managed to find its way onto this list in an unexpected place with What The Golf?
What The Golf? started life on crowdfunding site Fig, and released on Windows PC and iOS devices in 2019, before coming to the Nintendo Switch in May of this year. The game was nominated for numerous awards upon release and won Best Mobile Game at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
5 Lonely Mountains: Downhill (84)
Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a physics-based cycling game that requires players to traverse tricky terrain as they cycle downhill. Like with the previous entry, Lonely Mountains: Downhill originally released on other systems before coming to the Nintendo Switch this year. The punishingly difficult game has another similarity to What The Golf? in that it was nominated for multiple awards, including Best International Indie Game from Poznan Game Arena which it won.
4 Football Manager 2021 (86)
The lackluster FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer releases are in stark contrast to Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series which continues to dominate the management side of sporting games. Sports Interactive hit the ground running when they left their popular Championship Manager series and teamed up with SEGA to make Football Manager 2005, and the series hasn’t missed the mark many times since.
There were fears that the sim was beginning to lose its edge after a poor run of releases from 2015 to 2018 that nearly saw the series drop below the 80 mark on Metacritic multiple times, but a bounce back into 2019 helped kick start a rejuvenation. This form continued with FM20 and has stayed with FM21. The latest iteration doesn’t offer any widescale changes, but it does fix a few pre-existing issues. Team talks, press-conferences, and individual meetings carry more weight, new statistics like XG add further insight and the game runs better than ever before, with shorter load times and a smoother match engine.
3 Super Mega Baseball 3 (87)
The second baseball game on this list, MetalHead Software outdid themselves this year with one of the best unlicensed sports games in recent memory. Despite the character models, Super Mega Baseball 3 isn’t the arcade experience that players may expect, and there are no power-ups or special moves like in NBA Jam or WWE 2K Battlegrounds. Instead, the game offers surprisingly realistic baseball gameplay but with more simplistic controls than its MLB The Show counterpart.
2 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (89)
Remaking two games that have a combined Metascore of 190 was always going to go down well. Vicarious Visions did an excellent job with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, re-inventing the games to appeal to a modern audience while staying true to its source material. The gameplay, which is as exciting as ever, takes place on the classic levels which have been beautifully re-designed.
1 F1 2020 (91)
Since their first Formula 1 release in 2009, Codemasters have slowly but surely improved upon each of their yearly F1 entries. The series is now at a point where it has surpassed DIRT and looks set to dominate not just the motorsport genre, but the entire sporting genre for many years to come.
Along with its fantastic driving mechanics, F1 2020 continues the series’ tradition of offering incredible depth to the management aspect of Formula 1. My Team mode allows players to build a team from the ground up with a fantastic range of customization options and management mechanics that give players more than enough content to keep them engaged until next year’s inevitable release.
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