Onimusha 3: Den Siege

The first sports game that I had when I was young was a handheld version of football that I borrowed from my Dad when I was a young kid. Several years later, when I got the NES, my dad borrowed a game called Fighting Golf (made in Japan) from my dad's friend's son Matt many years ago. Later on, we got NES Action Football, Tecmo Baseball, Blades of Steel (hockey), Track Meet, and Duck Hunt, to name a few. When I got the SNES, I played no sports games at all because I had other genres to play, including plat formers and RPGs. When I got the PlayStation, I still played genres, especially RPGs like the Final Fantasy series. Then came Tony Hawk. The numerous demos of the series had me hooked, and I bought the game starting with part deux, which allowed you to create your own skater, only as a male. But when part 3 came around the same time I bought my PS2, I can also play online, and I did. For awhile. I didn't find my friend Josh online, so I decided to play with strangers. Skateboarding online while chatting at the same time? Cool. I'll just wait until broadband to get the full experience on all the online sports games, which are free only to PS2 users compared to $10 for online RPGs like Final Fantasy XI. Then came NCAA Football 2004. I haven't seen a college football game, but I heard good reviews about the title, which was made by EA Sports, which was famous for another title, Madden. I got hooked on the football game and led my created team (named after my high school) to a national championship. The month after the game, I bought Madden NFL 2004, and got addicted. This was the best football and sports game ever made, period. It is the best-selling game of 2003 and the most popular sports title for that console. Then in October of 2003, I bought NBA Live 2004 and was still hooked. Later on, I got MVP Baseball 2004 and was still awed. These games, and many more from EA including Tiger Woods PGA Tour, are so real, you can feel it.

I like EA Sports games since they have the EA Sports Bio feature (only in 2004 and beyond titles), which allows you to keep track of all the EA Sports games you have. If you win again and again, your Gamer level goes up, and extra stuff pops up in all the games. Get more games, and level up more until you reach 100. That's the gist of it. Bio or not, EA Sports stays true to its slogan, "If it's in the game, It's in the game". 'Nuff said.

Oh, and EA Sports has another division called Big, which makes extreme games like snowboarding (SSX), wrestling (Def Jam Vendetta) streetball (NBA Street) and now open-ended football (NFL Street), all of which are as succesful but not as popular as the EA Sports games like Madden, which was used as a movie reference in the hit flick Runaway Jury, which featured the name "Madden Challenge", a cash-filled tournament in which the winning team played by the player wins money. It is also used in the game as a way to receive points towards Madden Cards, a way to use cheats and other good stuff to get your game on.