It's hard to visit any video game store without being bombarded by waves of old Madden, NBA 2K, and NHL games. They're the sort of game that hardcore fans will buy for six months and then trade in for $10 worth of credit for the next game in the series. And while there's still a fair amount of variety to be found in outliers like winter sports game, it's a genre largely dominated by just a few series that aren't doing all that much different these days.
The only time I've put even a little bit of time into a sports franchise was during my deployment, where where I somehow enjoyed a few games of NBA 2K14 to the point where I even shelled out some of my deployment pay to purchase a copy of 2K17 on the Switch. Needless to say, I lost interest in the games the moment I spent my own money on them.
These days the closest I come to a sports video game is Steep, a snowboarding/skiing/wingsuit open world with one of the most relaxed multiplayer playlists I've ever seen.
It's almost noncompetitive in how relaxed interacting with other players can be. It honestly reminds me a bit of riding a motorcycle. There are plenty of people with bigger and faster bikes than yours, but all anyone cares about is how much fun the riding itself is. By default, one of the buttons is assigned to just woohoo the other people around you and cheer. Everything you do is accompanied by a mellow soundtrack that seems designed to put you in a good mood. I was holding out for the Switch version (which has sadly been "indefinitely delayed"), but Epic suckered me in by offering the game for free, and it's been addictive ever since.
What sort of sports games (if any) do you folks consider to be your guilty pleasure? Are you the sort of person who trades them in year after year, or do you prefer to leave that lone copy of Madden 2008 on your shelf and think, 'Maybe I'll play it again for some reason?'
