The Best Sports/Racing Game of 2016

Honorable Mention: Madden NFL 17

It’s award season here at Twinfinite! Starting with a few runner ups, let’s look back at the best sports and racing games from this year and our 2016 winner!

Last year’s Madden NFL 16 was the final year of a rebuilding process. A year where fans could finally start to see the picture coming together and a bright future ahead. Madden NFL 17 finally delivered on that promise, and while it still has a ways to go before it’s a contender to some of the other games we’re honoring, the franchise is in a lot better shape.

Madden’s Ultimate Team is still one of the best “fantasy” modes out there, and M17 added more depth than the mode has ever seen. Competitions, unique seasonal cards, and a hefty amount of situational challenges give players more things to do with their team beyond just squaring up in exhibitions. Franchise is also in great shape. It wasn’t as buggy at the start as M16 was, and the Play the Moments is an excellent addition which allows you to put a dent in your season without feeling the need to sim a large portion of it.

And finally, on the gameplay front, Madden NFL 17 added some welcome changes to both RBs and defensive play calling. There’s still some work to do, but calling Madden nothing but a roster update is just untrue as of the last few years, including this one.

Honorable Mention: FIFA 17

Unlike its American cousin Madden, FIFA has been in maintain, rather than catch up mode, the last few years. It has less to prove because it has racked up a few years in a row of quality games. It has continued to improve on already existing features while also adding new ones to remain the biggest soccer sim on the market currently.

The Journey is a fantastic addition to FIFA 17 that provides fans an authentic look into the life of a young, up and coming soccer player, rivaling MLB The Show’s fantastic Road to the Show.  Changes to how set-pieces play out allow for a greater level of control, and the move to the Frostbite engine gives tackles, jostling, and collisions an added sense of physicality.

FIFA 17 is one of the few sport games to still have direct competition, and once again, it has found a way to stay competitive and improve on its own formula.

Second Runner Up: MLB The Show 16

Despite what my UK colleagues might think, baseball is the real “beautiful” game, and The Show continues to be one of the prettiest games around. Unlike just about every other major sport, the layout of a field and stadium factors heavily into play in baseball, and it’s amazing that year after year, San Diego Studios continues to top themselves in recreating each park, and of course the players.

MLB The Show 16 isn’t just a pretty face, though. It also remains one of the most true-to-life sport games around. There’s a strategy to taking and delivering pitches in real life baseball, and unless you’re a god-like player, you need to respect those rules in The Show too. Not swinging at everything, pitching around the strike zone, and knowing when to take a pitch at the plate are all skills that are valued in-game.

While The Show has tried to experiment with some outside of the box new features like the bizarre Conquest Mode from this year’s edition, the staples of the series — Franchise, RTTS, and Diamond Dynasty — are all just as solid as ever. All three are probably due for a touch up sometime soon, but The Show continues to be a fantastic Baseball sim.

First Runner Up: NBA 2K17

Man, I sure do wish 2K could do for other sports what they have done for the NBA over the years. Like most other games that made it here on this list, NBA 2K17 is an incredibly faithful (unless you’re Steph Curry), Basketball sim. However, what 2K17 has done with the game’s story mode AKA MyCareer is just so damn cool.

While sadly not nearly as wonderfully campy this year, MyCareer is still one of the best sport story modes out right now, alongside FIFA 17’s new The Journey mode. This year, you become of “The President of Basketball” and build a relationship with Justice Young (AKA Michael B. Jordan), on and off the court. It’s a window into the life of a sport star, and hopefully 2K continues to add zanier additions to NBA 2K going forward, in addition to building on what is an incredibly fun and well polished basketball game.

Winner: Forza Horizon 3

This shouldn’t come as a total shock as we have nominated Forza Horizon 3 for our overall Game of the Year for 2016, but yeah, it’s because Forza Horizon 3 is that good. While the Gran Turismo franchise has been in hibernation, obsessing over finer details such as getting the exact number of road lines perfectly correct on each track for years on end,  Playground Games has been busy producing some of the most fun open-road racing games of all-time, and Forza Horizon 3 is their greatest work to date.

Senior Editor Chris Jecks says it best in his GOTY nomination post, but the new festival format in Forza Horizon 3 provides an endless amount of exciting events and creative options to make your festival a blast. Choose where and when to expand, and what types of races (restrictions or lack thereof) you want to hold.  And, as usual, vehicles and the environment around you have an impeccable level of detail. Most importantly, it rides the line of not being too arcade-like or too sim-like, and the end result is something that is very fun to play.

Overall, Forza Horizon 3 is the total package, and that’s why its our pick for the Best Sports/Racing Game of 2016!

Congratulations to Forza Horizon 3, the winner of our Best Sports/Racing Game category for 2016! Be sure to visit back this week more award announcements including the big one, our game of the year for 2016!