Sport

Ridge Racer 3D - now over a couple of years old - is staunch reminder of two things. First, arcade racers are awesome. More titles should drop the realism and rap music of recent racing titles and should instead employ someone to shout down the speakers at you.

While EA has cornered the market on NFL games (by default, really), 2K has appeared to do the same with NBA sports simulations. While publisher Take-Two Interactive has been accused of just releasing roster updates with these annual releases, their series has been known to take risks and tweak major gameplay elements on occasion. NBA 2K14 continues this tradition to a degree, but it's not as crafted and accessible as it should be.

Mario has long enjoyed a wide variety of spin-offs. Best known is Mario Kart, although the little plumber that could has never been completely tied to to the racetrack. This tradition of allowing an untrained fat man to star in various sporting events continues with Mario Tennis Open for the 3DS.

The Vita is a treasure trove of titles, offering more or less everything you might want to play within only a few taps of your grasp. Real Boxing is the first of its kind though, and is the sort of game you might not know you want until you see it. With a sharp idea unavailable anywhere else on the Vita, you may be able to overlook the fairly constant shortcomings and see your boxer through to the final belt.

Motorbike games have always been a part of video gaming culture. Go back to the early days of SEGA and Nintendo and you'll see countless attempts at bringing those two-wheeled speed demons to the digital realm. This has kind of dropped off in recent years as developers would rather show off pretty cars with high end labels. MotoGP 13 proves that there are still games out there for people that want their motorbike fix, offering high speeds, realistic physics and challenging gameplay that will keep a hardcore fan happy for months.

Since releasing Title Bout Championship Boxing 2.5 back in 2008, the boxing simulation series has laid dormant, as Out of the Park Developments shifted their focus full-time to their baseball management sim, finally selling it to frequent collaborator studio P.I.S.D. Ltd. back in May. Hand in hand with that news came word that the long-awaited Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 would be released - and it arrived this week on PC and Mac, a (somewhat) successful for the oft-forgotten franchise.

Unlike most iterative sports game series, the Out of the Park development team never rests on their laurels in the off season, making it one of the only sports titles worth purchasing on a yearly basis. Out of the Park Baseball 14 is no different: where OOTP13 received a number of cosmetic changes and feature additions, OOTP14 is about refinement, reworking a lot of the game's code and adding another layer of depth to its core gameplay mechanics – in other words, it's a completely different, new experience, something many other sports titles can't boast ...

Introduction New Soccer Star has been around for a long time, but its jump to mobile devices has rocketed the franchise to new heights. Not only did its creator, Simon Read, win a BAFTA over other, more established franchises like FIFA and Forza, but sales have been high and critical reception seems to have been very positive as well. With great reviews, a place in award show history and a renewed interest in what is bound to be a bigger…

Trials HD was perhaps one of the most difficult games of this generation. Getting through the later levels took such a degree of timing, so much muscle memory and a healthy dose of luck. For Evolution, Red Lynx pushed everything one step further, creating a game where the stunts were more deadly, the feats more impressive and the locations more interesting. Now the franchise is finally returning to PC, and to reward the long wait the developers have decided to pack in both Trials HD and Evolution. That seems like a lot of value, but remember that this ...

Was MLB 2K13 doomed from the start? Up until a few months ago, there was no word from 2K or MLB on a license renewal – and once it finally was announced in late January, it seemed too late for 2K to implement anything new or innovative. But even with lowered expectations, MLB 2K13 is a travesty of sports gaming, a blatant reproduction of 2K12 in every single facet. This isn't completely a terrible thing: what worked well in 2K12 worked here, but with less modes and absolutely no sense of effort on the part of developer to clean up any of its problems, it's an ...