Last week Operation Sports detailed five mistakes sports game developers constantly make that drive gamers batty.

Continuing with that theme, here are five more things the developers get wrong time and time again. Hopefully a few of them will make note and … you know … try to please their customers.


Let Us Save Our Memories

Five years ago it was understandable. Very few gamers had extra blank memory cards laying around and the idea of a hard drive built into a console was a new one.

But this is the next generation people! Can somebody explain to me why I can’t take screenshots and save them to my 20 to 120 GB hard drive?

And how on earth can a game like FIFA justify making you sit there as an FLV file gets uploaded to an EA server, when you can’t just save the replay to your hard drive?

Much like the rest of the items on this list, we’re not talking rocket science here. People like to save replays and then either share them with friends or go back and re-watch them. The same goes for screenshots.


Where’s The Party?

You’re year five into a hard fought Madden franchise. After completely gutting and rebuilding your team, you’ve finally turned your team into a powerhouse that’s ready to challenge for a championship.

After destroying your opposition you get to the big game, and sure enough you have enough to take home the trophy!

The catch is, though, there is no trophy. In fact the celebration is minimal – at best. No cut scenes. No music. No montage of your players carrying you off the field. Nothing.

Too many games neglect this aspect of sports gaming. They take what should be heralded as a huge accomplishment (after all in sports gaming this is the equivalent of slaying the dragon and freeing the princess isn’t it?) and largely make it out to be no big deal.

If you’re lucky you’ll get a screen that says “Congratulations!” with your team’s logo and a picture of the trophy.

Yawn.

How about players going nuts? Perhaps a scene showing your boys getting those overpriced hats and t-shirts? Maybe a little champagne and/or beer being sprayed in a clubhouse? Or your crazy closer doing his Lord of the Dance impression on the pitchers mound after the game?

Something. Give us something we can get goosebumpy (I just made that word up – but you feel me) about.


Call Me Weird – I Like To Practice

With today’s emphasis on online play, leagues and Madden challenge like tournaments you would think sports games would have all sorts of practice features.

FIFA is one title that drops the ball horribly in this realm. With all the set plays in soccer – free kicks, corners and penalties – it would be helpful if you could jump into a scenario mode and practice.

Personally I have played a ton of FIFA and still don’t feel comfortable with the set plays. You just never have a chance to experiment and figure out the best way to do things.

Other sport games have the same problem and it should be an easy fix. If there’s one game that has excelled here its Madden. You can do a ton of different things in the practice mode and really make yourself a better player. If only other games followed the lead.


Bring The Crowd To Life

Can somebody tell me why crowds in a lot of games sound like they’re at the opera? Again, this is something very few games do well, and you always hear gamers complaining about it.

Perhaps the best ever game in this regard was NCAA Football a few years ago, with the Home Field Advantage system. If you were an away team heading to a big time program’s stadium, get ready to hear some noise. And get ready for it to impact your game plan.

Of course NCAA took it out the next year. Apparently they like to keep us on our toes and not keep something in that was universally loved.

Other games do a decent job, but not quite where crowds and atmosphere need to be.

So pump up the volume and make the spectators part of the sports gaming experience.


So What Do All These Buttons Do Anyway?

I always found it ironic that back in the day of the NES and Genesis – when our controllers had four buttons and one direction pad on them – we had monster instruction manuals.

Fast forward to today. Our joysticks have 10 buttons on them. We have two analog sticks and one extra directional pad. And most instruction books are maybe 10 pages, mostly filled with legal nonsense and often don’t tell you how to actually play the game.

The worst offender in recent memory was NBA 2K8. Love the game, hate the manual.

Developers should have a very simple rule – detail every button you can press in the game and what it does. That is in fact the point of an instruction manual.

And please, remove the pages at the front of the book that tell you what each of the buttons are called. I know what the A button looks like. We’re good friends and don’t need to be reintroduced with every game.