Legends Football '98 Preview

It hasn't been intentional, but for years fans of PC football sims have had to choose between exciting onfield gameplay or extensive managing and coaching options. Sierra's Front Page Sports: Football Pro line, for example, is unrivaled in its array of front-office and coaching options, but its onfield action has always been strangely unsatisfying. The same goes for Total Control Football - it's wonderful if you're negotiating contracts, scouring the draft, hiring coaches, and trading players, but once the game switches from the boardroom to the gridiron, it falls apart. Madden NFL '97, on the other hand, is great for arcade-style play, but the absence of a career mode, realistic trading options, and some dubious simulation results limit its appeal.

"One of the biggest disappointments that we've had with PC football titles is that playability always seems to have suffered for depth or depth has suffered in order to make the game playable," says Steve Allison, the marketing manager for Accolade's new football sim Legends Football '98. "Our goal was to take advantage of the depth that the PC allows us to have while making sure Legends was as playable - in fact more playable and fun to play - than any other football game on the PC before it."

Every football fan has undoubtedly been burned more than once in the past by football sims that promised the total package but disappointed in one area or another. After testing a preliminary version of Legends Football '98, however, there is reason to be hopeful again. Naturally, it has all the stuff football fans expect: all 30 NFL teams; over 1,300 current NFL players; a play designer and playbook editor; a career mode that lets you compete over consecutive seasons; customizing options for schedules and divisions; an editor to change ratings for players and teams; statistical tracking by game, season, and career; multiple camera angles; and the usual lineup of realism options for fatigue, injuries, penalties.

Pretty impressive stuff, no doubt - but Legends Football '98 doesn't stop there. In addition to the 30 current NFL teams, Legends '98 adds 50 more teams taken from three distinct eras from pro football's storied past: 1932, 1950, and 1968. While it's true Legends '98 isn't the first game to have teams from the past - Madden NFL '97, for instance, had a good lineup of great teams - none has ever included an entire league's teams from a given season. The only sticking points right now are that Accolade has yet to finalize a deal that will allow it to use real players' names from the three past eras, and in order to make the September 1 ship date only one generic stadium for each past era is included (a stadium add-on disc is a possibility, says Allison).

Even more intriguing is the ability to mix and match teams from the four eras. You might think that given the size and conditioning of today's players, even the lowliest 1997 NFL team would march over a team from 1932 - but it's a little bit more complicated than you might think IF the teams play by 1932 rules. Rosters were considerably smaller then and players had to play both offense and defense ; a contemporary defensive lineman accustomed to playing only on passing downs, for instance, would probably collapse from exhaustion if he had to haul that mass around for the full 60 minutes of a game.

Though the preliminary version of Legends '98 is decidedly rough around the edges - the playbooks are generic, players at skill positions tire too rapidly, and player AI still needs tweaking - the arcade mode looks very strong. With the right camera angle you actually see receivers running the correct routes on passing plays, so it's easy to look downfield and "check off" on receivers until you find an open man. Support for the Gravis GRiP, Microsoft SideWinder GamePad, and other multi-button controllers means you don't need to hit one button to cycle through receivers and another to throw. It also allows you to create plays with five eligible receivers - a feature not available in any other football sim.

What's most noticeable most about the onfield play, though, is that it "feels" right: You won't see a linebacker or lineman chase down a wide receiver, for instance, and you actually have the chance to occasionally break a punt or kickoff return. The reason, says Allison, is that Legend's game engine is truly physics-based. "Every player's weight, speed, and consequent inertia is calculated in all collisions and interactions," he says, "and changes in direction are based on weight, speed, agility, and inertia. It sounds complex, but it really pays off in gameplay - big guys 'feel' like big, heavy guys when you're controlling them, and fast players really 'feel' agile and athletic."

That same type of realism extends to coaching and managing options, too. "We're really excited with some of the stuff we're doing with the career mode AI for trading and drafting," says Allison. "CPU team managers will base their decisions for accepting a trade or drafting a player based upon the strengths and weakness of their overall roster. And in the career mode we base the yearly improvement, deterioration, and retirement of players upon the averages for each position in the NFL. This makes for a more dynamic experience for players who enjoy consecutive season play."

About the only thing you won't find from the NFL in Legends Football '98 is a salary cap. Allison says that the Legends team explored the concept, but decided that "it was more of a drag to players than an enhancement to the simulation. The problem's this: How the heck are we going to simulate renegotiating players' contracts and performance incentive bonuses, which are the things that the really good GMs use to make the cap work? That's why we decided to concentrate on the stronger, more intelligent trade and drafting AI routines."

Legends '98 is clearly a very ambitious product - and how well something with this level of scope and depth will work when it's finished can't be answered right now. But if Legends delivers on its potential, we football fans could be in for a fantastic fall.