NFL Street 2 Unleashed Hands-On

LAS VEGAS--Electronic Arts is bringing many of its popular sports franchises to the PSP this year, and one of the first to be displayed is NFL Street 2 Unleashed, a new version of the recently released NFL Street 2 that will contain a handful of PSP-specific modes.

Like its console-based partner, NFL Street 2 Unleashed is a fast-and-loose football game that takes several liberties with many of the rules that slow down your average NFL football game. The resulting product puts the focus on playing with style, up to and including the ability to run up walls along some of the sidelines to avoid tackles. You can also spin and juke like a maniac in an attempt to get to the end zone. The defensive players deliver bone-crushing tackles to match the over-the-top offense.

As far as features that are new to the PSP version of the game, there seems to be a good amount of new stuff. There will be new challenges, such as the street slalom, style standoff, and the style point challenge, and these modes, along with many others, can be played by multiple people using the PSP's wireless functionality. But the game will also have a party play mode, where up to four players can pass one PSP around as they attempt to compete in some of the minigames for the highest score. Two of the fields from the first NFL Street will make an appearance here as well.

Graphically, NFL Street 2 Unleashed currently has a slightly slow play speed, but that's one of the many things that the team at EA Canada is still working on. The game appears to animate reasonably well, and despite putting 14 players on the field at one time, it still looks fairly sharp. Once the game speed gets up to a normal level, it should look just fine.

NFL Street 2 Unleashed is currently planned as a launch game for the PSP's North American release, which should put it in stores in late March. We'll have more on NFL Street 2 Unleashed soon.