NFL GameDay 2004 Impressions

While touring Sony's E3 booth this year, we got to take a brief look at NFL GameDay 2004, the latest in 989's long-running NFL series. As mentioned in our preshow report, GameDay 2004 will feature a hefty multiplayer upgrade via the new 989 Sports Online network, but where 989 ultimately wants to improve the series most is in its core gameplay and graphical presentation.

GameDay 2004 will feature a completely new graphical engine, designed to give a much more realistic look and feel to the series. The lighting and texturing effects throughout the game's stadiums have been totally redone, and the character models have also been retooled, with brand-new facial maps and new overall body design, all for the sake of realism. The build of GameDay 2004 we looked at was only about 50 percent complete, and while we could see some improvements here and there, the game still currently contains the same general visual style as its predecessors. Regardless, it does seem as though a sincere effort is being made to overhaul the game's graphics to a style more conducive to other NFL games on the market.

GameDay 2004 also aims to beef up the series with a number of new gameplay features--most notably in the realm of playbooks and play calling. The number of playbooks has been greatly increased, going from 12 in last year's game to about 36 this year. Each team will also have a playbook specifically tailored to it. Though a firm number of plays contained in the game was not mentioned, it was said that more than 500 offensive plays should make it into the final build. GameDay 2004 will also feature a new filtering system for sorting plays, breaking them up into pass, run, and special teams categories. Finally, and most impressively, the game will also give you the ability to use a peripheral headset in the PlayStation 2 versio--and not just for online chat, but also for voice recognition during an offline game. Specifics on the use of this technology were not available, but evidently you will be able to call specific plays and audibles using the headset.

NFL GameDay 2004 is scheduled for release in August on the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation. Expect more coverage of the game in the weeks to come.