User Rating: 7.5 | NFL Fever 2002 XBOX
NFL Fever is the start to a long series of American Football games made by Microsoft for its Xbox. This game combines the arcade fast paced game play of NFL Blitz, with the simulation style of the 2k series. This game has all of the standard modes: Dynasty, Single Season, Exhibition, General Manager, along with a special practice mode where you can either go through training camp where you do drills on tackling people, passing, and running the ball or you can just select a specific team and run any play you want to, to refine your skills. It has every team including the expansion team that will be entering the league next season the Houston Texans. It has a fantastic create a player and create a team mode, which makes it fun to create yourself because you can customize his accessories almost every way imaginable from his shoes to his wristband style. This game is trying to be put up with the status of Madden and NFL2K2, although its graphics are amazing, its hard game play, and unstable AI keep it from being just an above average American Football game. Graphics NFL Fever is without a doubt the best-looking American Football game ever made. The graphics and animations are flawless. The stadiums are so detailed that they look exactly like the real stadiums; you cannot find anything that does not belong or looks odd. They even have a stadium that isn't even built yet in the new Seattle Seahawks Stadium. When you look at a player you can notice who it is by looking at the face (if it is a popular player). When you look at the jerseys, you can see grass and dirt stains. You can see the little holes in the player's jersey, along with the reflection of the whole stadium on the player’s helmet. When a player catches the ball, even with the great replay system they have you can see the ball go into the players hand and there is no glitches at all. The only problem with the graphics is sometimes when a player catches the ball you cannot see him get both feet in bounds. The in-game animations are great, when a player makes a good play you will see him do a little dance or point for a first down. When he scores a touchdown sometimes he will come up to a camera, your screen then switches to that camera and he will pretend he is punching the camera and the camera will act like it is being hit swerving back and forth with his punches. The tackling animations are done very well. If you dive at a player and it looks like you would barely grab his shoes, you do, and he is tripped up for a little bit which slows him down. There are one-armed tackles, shoelace tackles, and regular tackles, along with variations of all the different tackles. Unfortunately the graphics in NFL Fever 2002 are its greatest attribute, which is not what everyone looks for in a game. 9 out of 10 Sound Effects/Music The music in NFL Fever is a mix of rap with lyrics to fit the game. Sometimes when you hear the music you will just sigh because it is so corny, and doesn't fit the game. You cannot use your own music on this game, which is a disappointment because sometimes you do not feel like listening to N.E.R.D. and Chuck D while you make your selections in the menu. When you are actually playing the game you can hear the music in the background barely, and sometimes they play stadium music, which for some reason includes a polka theme you will hear sometimes and think, what is that? When a player makes a great play he will taunt a little bit which is cool, but the voices are off sometimes, such as when a kicker makes a great kick he will say: "you want some of this" in a very deep voice which would fit a 250 pound linebacker. The taunts are most of the time lame at best. The announcers are fantastic, they call the game very well, and very rarely will you hear the same comment twice in a game. The announcers are Dick Stockton, Ron Pitts, and Randy Rowland. They also add two reporters on the field who will give pre-game and halftime reports from the locker room, which is a little thing that adds to the realism of the game. The sound effects are great, when you hit someone you can hear it and it sounds very real. You can hear the offensive line and the defensive line all grunting and hitting each other, battling right in front of you. The music in NFL Fever gets very annoying because you hear the same song over and over, it is like you are back in the genesis days, however, the commentary by the announcers and the sound effects in the game are done very well. 9 out of 10 Gameplay If I could point out one main reason why people would not like this game it is because of the game play. First of all the controls for American football games are mostly all the same, A is switch players, X is tackle, and to pass you press A to hike the ball then A again to bring up the passing icons, it has been like this in American football games at least from the Genesis on. In NFL Fever the default controller setting has X to switch player, B to tackle, and the passing icons come up automatically. I know it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but when you've been using basically the same buttons on all systems for the last five to six years it is a huge change. Yes you can go into settings and change the controller settings, however you cannot get exactly what you are used to. Also the right analog stick is used very often which is unusual and most people are not used to it. The game is very fast paced which will take a while to get used to. The passing is the worst; when you pass you have two options, either a lob or a fast pass. If you do a fast pass the ball hangs in the air way too long, about two seconds, however if you do a lob pass, the time the ball is in the air is pathetic and totally unrealistic. The AI in the game is terrible. If you are in any level of play except for the hardest mode you can do the same play over and over and it will work almost every time. However in the hardest level if you try to do 2 plays in the same set of downs you will not succeed both times. They needed to add another level how hard the AI is, because in the first three levels it is easy, but in the hardest level it is too hard. This is not the worst game ever, this game is very fun if you like a mix between arcade and simulation style American football, and are willing to spend the time customizing everything and getting used to the controls and style of play. Microsoft was just trying so hard to make a game that wasn't just like every other American football game, that they made it too different to the effect that some people will not like it at all. 6 out of 10 Long Term Fun Sports games really do not have that much of a long term value because they already have the next game in the series out in about eight months, and if you didn't buy the game right when it came out, the next game might come out in about four months. Also, most people will play a season and by the time it's over, they are tired of the game or they only play during the season when their in the mood to play the game. Most sports games are now coming out with dynasty modes so you will maybe want to keep playing, however playing twenty-five seasons in a row with the last fifteen seasons with players you haven't even heard of because all of the regular players have retired does not sound that much fun to people. NFL Fever has a great Dynasty mode where you can either play with or without the salary cap on, you can draft, sign players, release players, and create players. It is fun, but after a while you get tired of everything and you just want to play. This game does not have that much long term fun value unless you are obsessed with American football and want to play it all year long. 7 out of 10 Reviewer's Tilt 8/10 Overall This game is fun for a while, and then it gets boring. The graphics are phenomenal and the sound is good, however the actual game play is very difficult to the extent that you will not want to play anymore unless you set it on easy difficulty then you will just win every time, which some people like. This is not a simulation type of American football game. If you are looking for an unrealistic American football game that will challenge you, with a little bit of arcade style mixed in this is the game for you.. This game is just a start to the series so they will improve on the flaws; expect NFL Fever to be an annual American football game just like the Madden and NFL2K series. 7.5 A mix of Arcade and Simulation, if you aren't sure you'll like it, rent it! -Ben Berry
