Maybe good for kids; not for football lovers

User Rating: 2 | Backyard Football 2004 PC
I was recently given this game by a family friend, and I thought I'd try it out. I am a big Madden fan, so perhaps my review will be a little biased, but here it is.

First, the positives. The game has a lot of features and season modes which are nice. Also, a few star players are featured (McNabb, Jeff Garcia, Vick, Bettis, Marvin Harrison, etc). The game would be nice for kids who are still learning to play video games and are not ready for Madden-level play.

Now for the bad. It seems to me that gameplay was the last thing on the developers minds when they made this, which is why the game is no good, quite frankly. While the extremely limited control options are understandable considering it's for kids, it is nearly impossible to stop the other team from scoring. I drafted my team full of almost all the NFL stars, and I still had trouble stopping them no matter what play I used. It literally went back and forth. There's no fun in that. The offense is not much better. I had McNabb for my qb and Harrison and Boston for my receivers. They dropped passes at times and McNabb also threw 3 interceptions in one game...against the no-name kid players! This makes no sense at all.

Overall, this game might be good for little kids to introduce football gaming before they pick up Madden, but the game leaves much to be desired for anyone else who is older than 5 years old.