The Game The game is football at it's greatest. Sega Sports delivers it's first football game in a very long time. This is the first ever 128-bit football game and it packs one of the most breath taking, mind blowing, football gaming experiences ever. With the obvious edge in graphics will it still manage to be the best pigskin cart this season against Madden NFL 2000 and NFL Quarterback 2000? Let's get onto the review and find out. Graphics These have got to be the greatest visuals ever for any football game I ever played. They're that dang good. After every play the get a awesome looking closeup of the main player of that play who made the catch, run, interception, block, etc. and they look so close to real thing off a telecast of a football game. All the players are detailed down to every little logo on the uniform, and the names are easy to read off the back of there jersey's . And you can easily tell a weather condition to, like you can see the actual raindrops and snowflakes during a game, and when it's raining you can even see little mud tracks on the field. You got all the animations nicely done like there's many different animations of tackles, like wrap around tackles, spears, etc. You can easily see players stiff arming, spinning, and juking. I love the many different camera angles used during the game. You got a great blimp view, which is a way high over type view, it looks really cool and all, but all the players look tiny, and it's really hard to play. Then there's the all familiar slightly over head view which is a default in most football games today, then there's the horizontal view, which will bring back memories of playing the Tecmo Bowl games, and there's awkward 3/4 view angles, and finally there's the cinematic angle, which mostly resembles a real televised game with lots of closeups. I remember setting up a computer game with the cinematic camera, and my mom walked in with the game playing, and I say, 'What do you think of my new game?' and she replies with a surprising remark of, 'That's a game!?' Yes folks, it looks that real. Sound Let me start off by saying how great the sound effects are. All the tackles, grunts, etc. sound just like the real thing, and just like in the sega's NFL games for Saturn, there's a whole lot of trash talking going on right before the hike of the ball. The QB calling the play audible right before the snap sound great too. You can here just about everything during the game, heck you can even here the rain drops. The menu music sound like it came off Fox Sports or something like that and it fits the game right on the dot. Now what really amazed me was the commentators during this game. Instead of hiring big gun tv broadcasters like the Madden and QB Club games, this game hired voice actors for doing the commentary. And man, they got the right persona for the football commentator. And it's the perfect 2 man team. One guy does the play-by-play while the other throws in some comments about the play. And even though they get repetitive after a while, they never sound old. I mean, every time I throw a incompletion I keep on hearing that commentator rant about the play when he says, 'He throws that football as worse as my Paperboy throws my Sunday Paper!' and I always get a kick out of it! Game play The controls are so easy to learn. The control stick allows for easy 3-D movement on the field. And the 4 main buttons on the control pad are used for stiff arming, diving, spinning, and juking on offense, while on defense only used for blocking and tackling. The radial menus at the games main screen and play selection screen allows for easy use of choosing the options and plays with the control stick. That's another great thing I like about the game, the play selection menu. While the plays appear at the bottom of the screen in a radial form, you'll see the formation of the play and the routes your players will run on screen, which will be way easier to tell which play you wanna choose rather than squinting your eyes at the X's and O's in those little play boxes in other games. But the sad part about this is if you're going against a friend, they'll easily see what play you're gonna do. The solution to this is by getting a VMU and enable VMU play calling, so you can easily select your plays on the VMU without your friends seeing it, but the downside about this is that you can't see the play formations, but you should have them memorized by then. But I wished there was some sort of bluff play calling like in the Madden games or the where you can hid the play select box like in Blitz 2000, but oh well, the VMU play calling is good enough for me. You can do all the fun customization stuff like making players, teams, trades, fantasy draft, and all that fun stuff and even make your own user records too. Now I want to go over the modes of play. For all beginners I recommend trying out the tutorial mode. It's just a basic game, with game tip after each play, and it helps you understand the game a whole lot. Next there's quick start mode, where the game just picks a couple of random teams with default rules for you to play. Then there's exhibition where you can pick your team and customize the game length, weather, etc. And finally there's playoffs and season. You can save your progress on the VMU, the game keeps track of all the stats for player, and stuff, and even has votes for the Pro-Bowl. Just like in all other games, you can bypass some season games if you feel like it and go all the way into the Super Bowl. But the ending for the game really disappointed me, I expected some great FMV of the game's own footage (like how the game's intro was) with players holding the Vince Lombardi trophy in celebration and all, but what do we get here? We get a dumb portrait of the V. L. trophy and says ' (Insert team name here), Super Bowl Champions' Now does that stink or what? The running game is somewhat hard. You can't seem to get vary far, no matter how many spins, stiff arms, and jukes you do, I believe my longest run was about 35-40 yards. I wanna cover some of the glitches in the game that really drove me mad. If you're playing with 2-4 players, it'll be just a tad tricky for player 2-4 to call timeouts and make substitutions. At first they can't but after monkeying around with the control stick on the radial menu for a while you will. And the other second goof up is that if you have more than 2 user record profiles, your records will get all goofed up. For example my record was 5-2, and my other friends record was 3-1, now I beat the computer for the game and it counts as a win for me, but as a loss for my friend. So the next time my friend came over he got really mad and though I just beat him with nobody controlling him until I explained the errors. Also you might wanna get a separate VMU for this game because it takes up 190 blocks, only leaving 10 empty ones for your VMU. Now these problems were the 3 major one's and made the gaming experience a real pain, but they are forgivable, because this game is just so dang fun to play. Replay Value The game is fun to play by yourself, by going through the season mode that is, and trying to make it all the way to the super bowl. But after I got done with a whole season and playoffs, I didn't feel like going through the whole dang thing again. But creating players and teams is a blast to do, and that'll keep you hooked for a while longer. But the main attraction here is the how great the multi player action is. With up to 4 players playing one of the best football games ever, you're gonna be in for a wild ride which will last forever. In Brief +: The best dang home console graphics a football game can buy, great commentating, lots of customization with creating players, teams, and fantasy draft -: The user records and 2-4 players timeouts glitches really are annoying and get frustrating, occasionally the game skips to The Final Ratings Rundown Graphics: 9. 9 Sound: 9. 7 Game play: 8. 9 Replay Value: 9. 1 Overall: 9.4 out of 10 Final Analysis This is one hell of a football game and you'll be playing it for months on end with it's endless options and great multi player blast. This completely blows away the competition. NFL QB Club 2000 is nothing compared to this, and Blitz 2000 really doesn't count because it's geared more to the arcade type audience rather than simulation. But this game blows all the other simulations from 1999, yes I do think it's better than Madden and Gameday, combined! I can easily forgive the glitches, but I recommend waiting for next years version because basically it's the same game, with enhanced graphics and a better running engine, minus the glitches, and add online play, and it'll easily go down as a great game.
