Eleven Table Tennis
Unlikely killer-app and true “eSports”
Disclaimer:
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Played with Oculus Rift + Touch, 2-front-facing camera setup
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I like table tennis in RL. If you don’t, this game may not be for you.
Before buying this game, I tried VR Sports Challenge from the Touch pre-order bonus. This was fun for 1-2 hours, but never felt like real sports. My expectation when buying Eleven Table Tennis: just another tech demo with unintuitive controls and assists that make every shot magically hit the target.
– Real player with 294.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sports VR Games.
Real-life competitive player here. This truly blew away my expectations - the physics are so much better than I was expecting, and from interactions on discord, I can tell you the lead dev really cares about every bit of minutiae which may affect the realism.
Takes a while to get the settings sorted (but it’s the same IRL when planning to buy a bat), and once you do, it’s incredible how immersed you feel - to the point where I play with my table tennis shoes and shift my weight and move my feet like IRL.
– Real player with 28.6 hrs in game
Premium Bowling
Easily the best 10 pin bowling simulation ever made. It has everything and the devs continue to add to it for free and make subtle improvements. It has a heavy online presence of players from every country of the world and rankings, league and team play. You can play either in pancake mode or online - and the game is able to separate the rankings and scores of them both but also mix them in. I personally am a regular user of this game and it is the only online competitive game I often play at the moment. I’ve risen to world ranking 9 in the 6 weeks I’ve heavily been playing and 232nd in VR. The game has it all. The highlight of this game are the physics - which have been adjusted and improved with the help of a semi-professional bowler that contacted the team after the game came out of early access a year ago. It is incredibly realistic. People online play seriously or for fun. It is generally a good atmosphere but like all games in life - you do get one or two annoying idiots. This game is a stayer. It will continue to rise in the “number of hours” played in my steam library. It is currently ranked 12th out of over 1000 games - it will eventually be in the top 3 and very soon. I can’t recommend this game enough. Even if you are not into bowling you should consider giving it a go if you want a superb, competitive VR online experience. The pancake mode is easily the best 2d bowling game ever made also. Try it out you won’t regret it. I bought this game at the beginning of 2020 but hardly touched it until 2 months ago. Now I play it constantly. I knew when I bought it that I eventually would.
– Real player with 373.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sports Bowling Games.
Great game overall, but the global ranking vs league ranking could use some tweaking. Global tracks best series and best game for the week, but puts no emphasis on overall ability across different oil patterns. Anyone can roll well on the easy patterns, but it takes a lot more work on others and the global ranking doesn’t reflect some player’s inability to perform on more than one or two patterns. The league play showcases overall skill across all patterns and is why I think some of the higher ranked global players are notoriously absent from league play, where their deficiencies will show up. In league, there are only 3-4 high level players across all the patterns that I’ve seen so far. League is the better showcase of ability. Global ranking is a one trick pony.
– Real player with 266.6 hrs in game
eSail Sailing Simulator
I came to eSail after putting in over 100 hours on Sailaway. I still go back to Sailaway occasionally as it has its own strengths, such as if you just want to head off into the depths of the ocean, but eSail is in another league and I can’t recommend it enough. As others have said, at the very least you’ll learn plenty about how to sail, which isn’t offered anywhere else to this degree. This review is mostly a comparison of the two, and hopefully that may help – when I was first trying to decide which one to go with, I didn’t have a clear idea of the differences.
– Real player with 810.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sports Racing Games.
I have over 200 hours worth of game play, more if certain episodes were not scrubbed from memory (more on that later). I’ve achieved Master Explorer and had a fair few scrapes along the way.
Now, eSail is not what I would call a finished product, but it is playable, enjoyable and educational, what more could you ask for from a simulation? This is not as such a racing simulator, eSail aims to replicate a ‘realistic’ sailing experience. A lot of work has been put into wave motion and sail handling. To a lesser extent there is a basic navigation layout allowing you to plot a course and follow it, it has adequate mooring and anchoring features. There are still a few bugs with anchoring but of no real consequence, just take your time.
– Real player with 264.5 hrs in game
Victory Road
Absolutely love it. It’s sorta like if Punch Club and Inazuma Eleven (for the DS) had a baby.
There’s a bit of boxer customization when it comes to their looks–hair, skin color, eyes, gloves, and trunks/shoes, You can’t change their name–only randomize it along with their starting height, weight, and BMI. So if you’re looking for a particular name, or a particular weight class with a specific height you’ll be randomizing quite a bit. Hopefully we can have more control over this in a future patch.
– Real player with 112.4 hrs in game
I’ve been excited for this game since I saw it pop up on /r/indiegames . After sinking almost a day’s worth of time into the game, I think i’m ready to review. First off, this game is what you make it. Don’t be deceived by the retro 2d look - you can do everything in the game from actually training your boxer to sending him off to work in the slave mines and gambling the money away. You manage everything from the diet (and cutting weight) to choosing your challengers to deciding whether to use illegal boxing gloves to increase damage against your enemies.
– Real player with 79.4 hrs in game
Football Manager 2021
The only notable improvement to the game is in the match engine, especially the trophy presentations and added match day detail. However, there are still annoying bugs that irritate me, the main ones being:
-Wingers running at goal from out wide, electing to shoot from the tightest of angles rather than pass.
-Attacking players ballooning headers miles over the bar from point blank range for no apparent reason.
-Players inexplicably running at half pace and losing out on a ball which even your 90 year old nan could get to.
– Real player with 2271.2 hrs in game
TLDR – I dont think the ME is as good as others are saying, not a fan of the UI but there’s a lot of FM in the game. Meh out of 10.
The overwhelming positivity on the match engine surprises me as that has not been my experience at all. Sure the animations look a bit better and we see some dinks now but there are really disappointing things that happen on the defensive side of the game which lead me to believe that the ME has regressed.
Defenders are incapable of dealing with long balls WHEN AN OPPOSITION PLAYER IS NEAR THEM. They either miss the header, misjudge the flight of the ball and see it sail over their heads or just watch the forward control the ball and run past them for a 1v1 (deeper defensive line caused the last one to occur more). It happens far too often.
– Real player with 1024.9 hrs in game
MX Bikes
Very fun game at the start it wasnt very fun because I had no idea how the physics would work, Once I adapted to the game it became very fun to race with my friends. Tip to getting better join MX Bikes discord and play with the kids in the vc’s.
– Real player with 161.3 hrs in game
Most realistic dirt bike game I’ve ever played, Been playing for a while at Washougal & it’s pretty hard not gonna lie the game is a real challenge & it test’s your patience. It’s difficult you have to be with this game in the long run but honestly I’ve progressed to only crashing once around the track many time’s no crashing at all & it’s actually VERY fun to play once you get the hang of it it’s amazing. I love the game which is why I’m writing this maybe more people will be willing to buy it & play. Btw you seriously won’t regret it which is why you should buy it. In my opinion 10/10 game I love it.
– Real player with 111.6 hrs in game
Out of the Park Baseball 20
UPDATE - 1/16/21 I guess after almost 2000 hours on just this version they don’t want me anymore. I had a game playing while walking my dog. When came back the game was uninstalled and no other games did that ever.
This is a formerly great game that I have nominated in prior years for Steam Awards. I got it many years from OOTP and the last few years on Steam. It was my favorite game. When OOTP started making what they call Perfect Team they took resources away from the game that made them famous to work on that part rather than the main games and thus OOTP began a decent in quality. All updates it seemed at the end of last year were for their new gimmick PT which I have no interest in. Bugs went unfixed. This year the release was in worse shape than last year and the vast majority of work appears to be on PT so the game is worse than it has been in years in my opinion. I really liked the guys on the OOTP team in the past. It looks like they got greedy though and trying to cash in on player decks and other garbage that has nothing to do with what made them great. I’ll play this version as long as possible and am done buying new versions. They lack the interest in the main game.
– Real player with 2091.9 hrs in game
Purchased day one as I have with the last two iterations. Long story short I recommend 10/10
Pros over OOTP 19:
1. This version is SO MUCH more efficient when playing or really doing anything! Last years version completely bogged down my CPU and GPU so it was impossible to do anything else multi-media related while in-game. OOTP 20 is a dream to run. I think the developers took A LOT of time with optimizing the game for this update. Last years version was painfully slow by comparison.
2. Spray chart is excellent! I appreciated this addition to the game. When you play the same game for a while with ficticious players you learn about many of them. However the spray chart for batting is excellent regardless.
– Real player with 690.8 hrs in game
Cricket Club
Playable, and shows a lot of promise, but will be frustrating after a while.
Visuals are very good, especially the photo realistic ground. Sounds are appropriate and the banter very relevant and nowhere near as annoying as some of the sounds/commentary in other games. Really like that there is a chance the fielder will drop the ball.
I’ve heard that a tracker on a real bat is the best experience, but I feel this would appeal to a minority audience as not many people have the room to freely swing a cricket bat.
– Real player with 336.7 hrs in game
EDIT2 : As of Update 5 this game is as solid as a rock, no more crashes (in my experience anyway). I honestly just can’t stop playing. Find myself talking to the bowlers as if they are real.
Seems to be way more variety in the bowling now and the replays are really useful for analysing your shots (or lack of).
If the devs have the time and resources to keep going this could become the EA Sports cricket of VR. Amazing game!!!
EDIT: Played a lot more now and I can’t get enough of this game. Cricket fans dream (and even if you are not into cricket it is still really good fun). I would have triple the time of it if not for this never ending heatwave in the uk. Love it and can’t wait for the next update.
– Real player with 71.8 hrs in game
Out of the Park Baseball 21
So I’m mainly a PC gamer and I have had the Baseball itch without it happening live. I purchased another Baseball game which is extremely fun to play as a classic “Baseball Game” Game, but then I kept hearing about this Simulation Baseball game called OOTP.
I looked into it, as as a Baseball lifer, and a numbers dork, I thought why not let me check this out, the price isn’t super expensive and I see a ton of positive feedback for it.
Let me say, it was a GREAT decision for this purchase, and OOTP Baseball just earned a lifelong fan who will be buying all the next yearly iteration and “OOTP Go” whenever that comes to the table.
– Real player with 1876.8 hrs in game
If you love a great franchise/management mode, this is the game franchise to get into.
However, I cannot in good spirit recommend this iteration of the series overall, more specifically supporting the development team, currently, until they show that they care about the game outside of Perfect Team mode.
Why? OOTP 20 was supposed to feature new animations, among other things, that were pushed back and back and back, and never came. The mobile version, OOTP Go, was supposed to release just after the launch of ‘20, never happened. Still is not released. Even the tournaments IN Perfect Team were promised to be added within the first couple months of 20’s launch. Guess what? They pushed it all the way back until November when they could no longer profit from new weekly ‘special edition’ cards and rating updates (making certain cards more and less viable). They have very obviously went down the ULTIMATE TEAM rabbit hole causing them to neglect everything else until the profits started to die down from the “Updates” … hell, many bugs from 19 and 20 still have not been addressed in 21. Even their podcasts are just hour long commercials for Perfect Team.
– Real player with 1350.6 hrs in game
PIPE by BMX Streets
ok, so i love this game…but that doesnt mean it needs work.
lets start with the pros
- Very addictive
+awesome tricks that are fun to combo
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physics are fun but realistic
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for anyone who even slightly enjoys bmx or even bikes i recomend this
Now…some cons
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barely any maps (3 and one is for training)
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no customization (on the bike you can change the color, but you cant change your charachter, your bike specs or type)
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no modding!
Now here is what i think.
If they add more maps with larger scale, more customization and maybe even small multiplayer, this could be my favorite game of all time
– Real player with 751.8 hrs in game
I have been playing pipe since it first came out in december and it has come far since even then. Huge respect to mash for making such a great game and taking everyones input and adding what we ask for. The controls are great each trick makes sense do to with the whole bumpers and triggers as hands and feet. It runs smooth on my pc and the graphics are good. Well worth $10 ive gotten 500+ hours on it since it came out first and with things being added in constantly keeps the game fresh. Really looking forward to see what mash can do with pipe and for BMX streets to come out
– Real player with 601.6 hrs in game