Sports games have been going from strength to strength over the last few years and 2019 has seen a bumper crop of sporting simulations hit the market. These new games offer players the chance to live out their sporting dreams, from leading their favorite American football team to victory to competing in a competition that combines Frisbee with Street Fighter.
In this article, we’ll be looking at some of the best sports games to have come out in 2019.
NBA 2K19
NBA 2K19 remains the king of hi-def graphical accuracy and is still one of the best looking games on the market.
Alongside its almost picture-perfect graphics and hugely entertaining gameplay, 2K19 comes with a range of game modes to keep you interested. One of the most engaging is MyGM, 2K19’s “football manager” mode that lets you build your perfect team.
You can pull famous players from teams that are the current favorites to win the next NBA Championship, like the Los Angeles Clippers, and combine them with promising players from less well-performing teams like the Washington Wizards, to create your own super team, all without actually playing any basketball yourself.
Madden NFL 19
The Madden games have been a little lackluster of late, but Madden NFL 19 brings the series back into the limelight by blatantly stealing some of the most successful aspects of its European cousin FIFA.
Longshot, the obligatory story mode, and the Ultimate Team mode might have been lifted right from FIFA, but Madden does make some streamlining changes that ultimately improve on them. Gone are the FUT dump cards such as fitness and injury cards, and the whole systems play just a little faster and more entertaining for their absence.
Windjammers
Have you ever wanted to combine a popular student common room game with a knockdown drag-out street fight? Well, then you are going to really enjoy Windjammers.
Bolstering the not exactly overwhelming range of sports-based Nintendo Switch games, Windjammers originally appeared on the much underrated Neo Geo in 1994 and is essentially a combination of Frisbee with Street Fighter.
The game has a reasonable hand-eye co-ordination skill level, combined with powered up trick shots and enjoyably retro pixelated graphics. The best part of the game is the local Joy-Con multiplayer.
MLB 19 The Show
Essentially the Baseball clone of NBA 2K19, MLB 19 The Show has many of the same high points and a few of the same negative issues.
The graphics are excellent, so much so that you can almost taste the stale popcorn and cheap beer, but it feels a lot like pretty much every one of its predecessors, right the way back to its glory days on the Xbox 360.
Like slipping into a worn and comfortable catcher’s mitt, the enjoyment of MLB 19 The Show is as much about nostalgia as it is about an innovative new take on the genre.
Out Of The Park Baseball 19
A wide-angle stablemate of MLB 19 The Show, Out Of The Park Baseball 19 is basically the Football Manager of baseball.
You can start a league as far back as the 1900s, recruit named players and lose almost worrying amounts of time negotiating contracts, pulling in free agents and making critical match decisions, such as when to steal a base.
The graphics are certainly nothing to write home about, but in a game that is basically a spreadsheet simulator, they do have a certain blocky charm to them.
WWE 2K19
Unlike its UFC cousins, WWE games have been languishing in the ‘not really good enough to mention’ category for some time now.
WWE 2K19 bucks that trend. The introduction of Universe mode introduces all the enjoyable pageantry of months of pay-per-view action and the MyCareer mode, which seems to have been built from the ground up, allows you to ham it up both in and out of the ring. A truly enjoyable wresting experience, especially for anyone who is a fan of WWE.