The latest, and greatest, thing in videogames!

[Glockstar]

RPS's!!!

'RPS?', you ask, 'What's RPS'?
Why, RPS stands for Role Playing Sports game! (aka RPSG)
It's the newest gaming genre. And I'm going so far as to call it the most immersive, most addicting, greatest gameplay element to be added to a videogame...EVAR!!!

Hey EA Sports started it. (And they might be doing it the best, still.) But where the role-playing element merely crept into earlier sports games, it is now a very popular feature of many different types of sports games - effected by many different developers: Madden (football), Tiger Woods and Links 2004 (golf), Top Spin (tennis), Tony Hawk's Underground ((extreme) skateboarding), and Amped 2 ((extreme) snowbaording) - too name a few.

Anybody who's delved into the create-a-player-career-modes of any of those aforementioned games knows that - despite being categorized in the sports genre - these games are truer RPG's than most RPG's are (even if they don't know it)!!!

C'mon... Final Fantasy, Xenosaga, Dot Hack, Skies of Arcadia... how the heck are these games called RPG's?!? I mean, just what role does the gameplayer play, anyway?!? In these games, you control a main character and progress him/her thru a (often long, complex, and emotional) story... but the character is not your own - and neither is the story! These games are adventure games - nothing more. You merely take control of a preset character and you advance him thru an adventure - there's no real role-playing there! What... because the character "levels-up", "learns" new magic tricks and modes of attack, "finds" new weapons, and/or "makes" new friends who join his party... these games are called "Role-Playing" games?!? Bah. Now... The Sims, Animal Crossing, Morrowind, and Fable... on the other hand, those could, and prolly should, be called Role-Playing Games.

But so to, should those aforementioned sports titles. As I said, they're more RPG than J-RPG's, fer crying out loud.

Here, take a look at Top Spin, as one example:
In Career Mode, you create a completely new player... you edit his* facial and bodily features, you pick out his* initial set of clothes, you name him*, and you choose his* home country. *=Or her. (Sheesh! Just shoot me already.) Then you seek out trainers to improve your skills, enter tournaments to earn "coin" and improve your ranking, and even seek out sponsorship - reaping the rewards of new equipment, apparell, and the "bling-bling", if you get it. During your quest to become the best you can use your earnings to buy new clothes, accessories, and equipment, and visit "salons" to tweak, or alter, your appearance. And "after" you've conquered the 4 single-player tournament-levels you can take your custom character, and his life-time of achievements, on-line and square off against a whole new level of global competition! Now that's role-playing!!!

Gamers (casual and hardcore) love this new brand of role-playing, and not only do developers know it, but they'll prolly be implementing this gameplay element into almost (any and) all of the next generation of videogames - regardless of genre! Hopefully. ;)

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

I see what you are talking about when it comes to sports games. Currently, I'm on Madden 2004 and it does feel like I'm doing some role playing, since I own a team (Chargers) while finding new coaches, cheating players out of money when signing them, changing the name of my created LB, and drafting losers on my team (damn cpu takes all the good players).

Also, I don't even consider a RPG unless I can do some type of character customization.

[meagher72]

Hit it on the head Glock....

Me and the girlfriend were SO exicted when we first got GTA3 because we thought the actions your char took in-game would affect the outcome of the game experience and the characters story line.....

Unfortunatly it did not and turned out to be a standard linear game where the player has no real choice in the progresion of the char except within the programmers set path from point A to point B....

Still a great game, but it had the potential for somthing new and exciting to be created.

Lets us hope that is coming next....

If programmers can correctly capture the true essence of an RPG which is choice and variety within a graphical interface format similar to a GTA, I believe a new rush of players to video games will form, perhaps one that no one has seen the like of since the introduction of Atari or the first NES.

We already saw a taste of this with the massive popularity of GTA and all it's clones..... lets us pray those with the power to make decisions have realized this too.