The Best Sports Games for 2024, Competitive games—the real-world type, not the esports type—have been a part of our culture since the dawn of humanity. They’ve served as entertainment, much-need distraction from the daily grind, and a spark for social change. As technology’s advanced, sports have expanded from playgrounds and stadiums to television and video games.
The PC may not be your first choice when you’re in the mood to play a sports game. After all, the platform lacks the popular MLB The Show titles and NHL games of any sort (it does have the FIFA, Madden NFL, and NBA 2K games, though). Still, there are many, highly entertaining sports-based PC games, particularly if you don’t care about realism or league licenses.
Ready to play some sports games? Let’s go!
Baseball Stars 2
Decades after its Neo Geo arcade debut, SNK’s classic baseball title remains one of the best arcade-style sports games ever made—even without a Major League Baseball license.
Baseball Stars 2 captures the sports’ essence via two leagues, 18 larger-than-life fictional teams, simple controls, oodles of charming animations, and incredible cut scenes that highlight tense moments, such as a play at the plate or a batter punching a pitcher in the face after being on the receiving end of a beanball.
The Best Sports Games for 2024
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Fire Pro Wrestling World
Fire Pro Wrestling World began life as a promising Steam Early Access title. Upon its official release, Spike Chunsoft’s “sports” game morphed into one of the most addictive wrasslin’ games to grace any platform.
An excellent return to form after the disappointing, avatar-based, Xbox 360-exclusive Fire Pro Wrestling, World has all of the elements that comprise a great Fire Pro game: robust creation tools, a ridiculously deep move set, MMA rules, cage fighting, gimmick matches, and tight controls and match pacing. Online play, Steam Workshop integration for uploading and downloading content, and optional New Japan Pro Wrestling DLC makes Fire Pro Wrestling World the best in its series.
Please note that this review score reflects Fire Pro Wrestling World as it appeared in Steam Early Access. An updated review is coming soon.
The greatest grappling game returns to take on the world!
Customize every aspect of the match, from your wrestler to the ring itself, in your fight for the championship belt.
PLAY ONLINE
Organize exhibition matches, tournaments, leagues, championship bouts and battle royals with players from around the world.
MIX UP THE RULES
Modes include Deathmatch (steel cage, barbed wire or landmines), no-holds barred Gruesome Fighting, and SWA homebrew rules that mix pro wrestling and MMA.
UNLIMITED CUSTOMIZATION
Create your dream wrestler from over a thousand devastating moves and even more body parts to battle for custom championship belts. Personalize the ring, mat logos and even the referee!
REALISTIC SIMULATION
Give your creations personalities with a robust CPU logic system that defines their every action. Does your wrestler play to the crowd, or play dirty? You provide actors for the ringside drama.
Football Manager 2024
SEGA’s Football Manager series is an enigma to many outside observers, but its seemingly niche appeal has grown into a borderline obsession for a large, passionate fan base. This soccer simulation is an insanely detailed, text-heavy simulation of the world’s most popular sport. Take on the role of club manager overseeing player transfers, on-field tactics, staff instructions, and everything in between in a bid to lead your club to glory.
Football Manager 2024 builds upon the previous version by including graphics improvements, new backroom activities, an an updated match engine. If you want to participate in the beautiful game, but lack Ronaldo-like skills, Football Manager is the next best thing to playing for your favorite squad.
Step into the shoes of a real boss and write your own football story in Football Manager 2024, the most complete edition in the series yet.
Whether you’re a manager who likes to build from the bottom or prefers to chase immediate glory, the perfect challenge awaits. The arrival of the new Meiji Yasuda Insurance Ltd J. League licence unlocks J1 League, J2 League, J3 League for the first time ever, giving you the opportunity to explore new horizons in Japan.
Wherever you manage, it’s up to you to build a team capable of competing with the world’s elite.
Game Description
Mutant Football League
Football is a bad sport. Yes, it’s beloved by millions, but the concussions that result from giants hurling themselves at each other are an undeniable problem. The sport is much more enjoyable in video game form, especially arcade-style football, which lets you perform superhuman feats without hideous injuries or annoying flags.
Digital Dream Entertainment’s Mutant Football League literally plays by that rule set by pitting skeletons, robots, orcs, aliens, and mutated humans against each other in not-so-friendly gridiron contests featuring landmines and cheat plays. Mutant Football League is definitely worth playing, and not because it’s the rare American football PC game that isn’t Madden NFL; it’s legitimately good, despite some annoying dirty trick plays.
Mutants and monsters unleash maniacal carnage on the gridiron in THIS action packed, arcade-style football game. Mutant Football League delivers intense online multiplayer action, deep strategy and deadly humor.
Fantastical arenas full of ruthless fans and deadly traps set the stage for mayhem in every contest that allows players to win by highest score or by killing and eradicating their opponents – a feat made easier as teams use their unique “Dirty Tricks” such as “Bribe the Ref” to overturn a call or having a player become “Ginormous” to grow in size and pummel the puny combatants in their path. Whenever a game begins you’ll quickly discover the only predictable element is broken bones.
Mutant Football League is the bloody-fun, next-gen, successor to arcade-style American football games, taking inspiration from over-the-top sports games such as NFL Blitz and the Sega Genesis classic, Mutant League Football. Digital Dreams’ MFL game delivers deep strategic 7-on-7 gameplay, with bone-crunching, tooth-shattering, head splitting hits, and a roster of comical ghouls delivering tongue-through-cheek humor. Oh, and blood. Lots of blood.
RetroMania Wrestling
Steel chairs. Finishing moves. Cage matches. Few things define pro wrestling as well as those three elements, and RetroSoft Studios’ RetroMania Wrestling has them—and more.
Sure, RetroMania Wrestling isn’t as deep as the excellent Fire Pro Wrestling World, but it caters to people who prefer their wrasslin’ games more arcade-like than sim-like. It’s a throwback title that recalls WrestleFest and other classic arcade wrestling games, thanks to simple controls that let anyone jump into the action and theatrics.
Rocket League
The Psyonix-developed Rocket League is a prime example of a video game that wants you do to one thing and one thing only: have pure, uncut fun. This oddball sports title blends RC racing’s charms with soccer’s heated, team-based competition, and adds plenty of over-the-top spectacle (big goals, wild saves) to keep every match interesting.
Rocket League is just as fun during your first hour as it is during your twentieth; there are very few multiplayer games that utilize addictive simplicity as effectively. It even supports cross-platform play with console players, so you can always find a match.
Super Mega Baseball 2
Long gone are the days when the likes of Midway’s NFL Blitz and Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. games ruled the market with their pick-up-and-play sensibility, flashy graphics, and outrageous gameplay. Hardcore simulations like FIFA or NBA 2K are great, but arcade sports fans have lamented the decline of the less realistic stuff. If you’re in that camp, pick up Super Mega Baseball 2.
The game offers accessible mechanics, a cartoony art style, and an overall sense of fun that’s rare in today’s sports games. However, it has enough depth to keep even the most die-hard baseball fans addicted. Super Mega Baseball 2 has a couple of graphics-related flaws, but it’s one of the best current-gen sports games available for PC.
Super Mega Baseball 3
Super Mega Baseball 3, with its focus on near-superhuman athletes and their copious stats, is, in essence, an interactive baseball card. Metalhead Software’s latest title is a snapshot of what makes the sport an internationally beloved game, as it inserts you into a world where dingers go deep, showboats flex their super-sized biceps, and pitcher-batter matchups are tense games of cat and mouse.
This third entry brings with it new on-field improvements, player traits, front office happenings, and gameplay modes for both default and custom ball clubs that push the series deeper into simulation territory. The new Pennant Race mode delivers cross-platform play with console ballplayers, too.
Despite light frame rate issues and other minor complaints, Super Mega Baseball 3 is the best title in the series to date and an outstanding PC game.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2—a bundle that remasters two, iconic late-1990s and early-2000s skateboarding games—is a joyous return to form for a series that has fallen on hard times in recent years. Its thrilling, combo-based action and pulsating energy will satisfy older folks longing for the game type that publishers have ignored for years, as well as younger people who are looking for a ridiculously entertaining diversion that features a blood-pumping, head-nodding punk and hip-hop soundtrack.
19 tracks, new and returning professional skaters (Tony Hawk, Kareem Campbell, and Nyjah Huston, among others), and a wonderful graphical overhaul round out this excellent package.
Turbo Golf Racing
If you find standard golf games far too tame, check out the Hugecalf Studios-developed Turbo Golf Racing. The sports game takes traditional golf and melds with elements from other, popular arcade-style sports games.
In fact, It’s hard to ignore the similarities between Turbo Golf Racing and Rocket League. Both titles feature cartoony karts that push balls into a goal, and the vehicles are aided by boosts, missiles, and other power-ups. Hugecalf Studios does a good job of implementing the “golf with cars” gimmick, despite the game’s few annoying elements. Still, it’s a good time on the digital links.
Windjammers 2
Like the original title, Windjammers 2 is a sports game focused on the fictional Flying Power League, a competitive circuit featuring neon-drenched athletes tossing Frisbees—er, flying discs. Your goal is to be the first person to reach 15 points in best-2-out-of-3 sets (or accumulate the most points before the clock expires).
However, the game is so much more than that basic description.
In essence, Windjammers 2 is a sports game with a fighting game’s heart; it even has parries and special moves! DotEmu’s sequel to the cult classic Neo Geo game delivers the same thrilling action as its predecessor, but adds new offensive and defensive moves, as well as rollback netcode and cross-platform play between PC and Xbox.
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