This economy hasn’t helped sports gamers at all. If you buy the entire collection of Electronic Arts sporting games made for this year, you’ve spent a good few hundred dollars. As it turns out, that few hundred dollars could pay for your textbooks, gasoline or cocaine habit. (Writer’s Note: Please god, do not get a cocaine habit.)
Instead, let us go through the subtle differences—excluding the obvious, like recent rosters—that you hopefully won’t miss in order to save some money. The prices mentioned are the current prices offered for these games from the Warehouse Deals bin at Amazon.com. I am using the Xbox 360 prices for this, but Playstation 3 game prices are very similar.
NCAA Football 10
Price: $14.99
Features lost: Okay, you don’t get to play as a number one Alabama football team with a monstrous Mark Ingram at tailback. That does suck. Changes in AI and the ability to make your own online stories are also in 11.
Still, this is $45 off the price of a game that does not have Tim Tebow on the cover and has nearly every intuitive dynasty-creating aspect the series has added so far, including the awesome custom conferences feature. Not to mention, it seems perfect to repeat the situation of certain conference title games featuring a certain aforementioned Florida quarterback.
Madden NFL 10
Price: $11.98
Features lost: The heavily touted “GameFlow” feature is not in Madden 10, but this is a tougher fish to fry. GameFlow’s performance is extremely subjective as to how well it actually improves the experience, and fans do enjoy the more realistic style from this game. Some gamers might also gladly pay $50 more to hear announcing great Gus Johnson have a virtual heart attack for your virtual game.
However, Madden’s gameplay is roughly the same building block it has always been. Madden will play like fun but realistic virtual football, and the experience is not all that altered by $50 extra.
NBA Live 10
Price: $19.95
Features lost: Alright, this is a tougher sell and one that might not even be worthy of swaying, since NBA Live 10’s sequel, the revamped NBA Elite 11, has not even been released yet and legitimately comes off as a total overhaul of the franchise, featuring Become Legendary Mode and a secret mode for a new remake of NBA Jam in the package.
Live, though, is still the best basketball game on the market, since 2K Sports’ NBA 2K10 bogged itself down in overly difficult franchise modes and personally annoying game mechanics. And even if you disagree with that, 2K10 is available for only $16.98 as well. Both are the best, most immediate and most frugal ways to get a basketball fix right now without going back in time to the days of the NBA Street franchise.
I decided to list these all because we are all college students. Half of us survive on ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we get a bit anxious without entertainment. So price has a lot to do with our concerns, and maybe you can live with the year of a game being a bit off.
