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I have been wrapped up and
swallowed playing Front Office Football. As a 19.95 download from the EA site it is the
bomb game IF you understand there is no twitchy button mashing and no graphics. It is
though complete cerebral football at the highest level... Madden is mostly an upgrade. It plays and looks for the most part (on the PSX) like last year's game. Of course you get this year's rosters, and having Marshall Faulk and Trent Green make things a bit more fun. I had some other comments that were posted in the 'Zine. [Note: see Phantmjokr's Madden 2000 PSX review.] I've got three games to talk about. Madden 2000 for the playstation, Quarterback Club 2000 for the Nintendo 64, and Front Office Football for the PC... Madden 2K. This is basically an update of last year's game (I have it on N64). What's most noticeably improved is the sound and the fact that Sumerall and Madden actually call the games. The play has not changed much at all. I think I've read that there was some change in it but I can't remember what it was. The other thing that stands out is the fact that there is now mass relative tackling. Which means backs get bounced by big tackles but big backs can bang around small cornerbacks. The bodies fly with the right sound effects added in! I've read they also incorporated this in the running game--now there are fewer stuffs at the LOS, and you can actually get some momentum yardage in the heavy midfield traffic, which if one remembers 99 was a bit of a concern. Inside forays were often a little too unforgiving and yielded a little on the slight side... The graphics on the PSX are getting dated and I was very unimpressed. The N64 is actually quite a bit more powerful graphically than the PSX and the 99 version on the n64 was much better looking. The players and backgrounds were often distorted and the thing is typically PSX grainy, but this doesn't effect gameplay. It plays great. I think they revamped the franchise mode pretty well and tweaked some of the stuff like trading (I was offered a couple a trades I took although I didn't offer any. IF one remembers it was almost impossible to get a trade through the 99 version), the draft (less dominated by punters and kickers), and free agency. Personally, I'm just waiting for the n64 version because the graphical upgrade for that playform should make it a VERY nice game... Quarterback Club 2000 for the n64. When I first cranked this one up I was floored by the stunning graphics! They were awesome with almost all of the stuff being high res motion capture but...the gameplay is both compelling and frustrating. The passing game requires a button to be pressed for a receiver to catch the ball and the problem is that as a player you never know IF you have timed it right to make the catch. Despite making the right press, the ball could still either be badly thrown or the receiver could still just drop it. It took me a LONG time to even get the hang of it at all and the resulting completion rate doesn't figure out to what one would expect from a real pro game... The running game is compelling in that the backs make nice motion capture slip moves and bounce around through traffic. The downside is still that with the AI on the hardest setting I was putting up huge numbers. This game doesn't react as well as Madden, where one must rotate through plays to stay in the game. QBC still leaves you those go to plays that almost always work, plays that Madden shuts down after a couple of successes. Finally there is no franchise mode, so despite it's stunning graphics Madden is the better play... Front Office Football. Beware! This game is a black hole of lost time! Whoever it was that came out and won the Superbowl all I can say to you is...you lucky &^%&! It starts out harmlessly enough. At first all one has to do is tweak up the Rams around Green, Faulk and company but...after a few simulated years you start investing hours in renegotiating contracts, trading off guys with escalating cap numbers, and generally tweaking your roster to get 46 game day players, your 8 inactives, and keep enough cap space to fill the inevitable move of an injured guy to the IR. It's tough folks... Actually I've hardcored it to 15 years out and I've bottomed out my franchise with my extreme philosophy of shipping off big cap guys for draft picks. The only way out now would be to cut some really good players. The problem I have gotten into is that I have too many mid-priced guys early in their careers. They all have great talent and potential but I've pushed myself into and extreme cap situation. Actually I'm about ready to dump this game. I've made the playoffs about every other year but have had little luck in the playoffs. The culmination was an OT loss in the conference championship. I haven't been keeping up with the franchise management much. Raised the ticket prices some etc but this game has LOTS of options thrown in there. IN fact I believe that in part EA Sports got interested so that they can get many of it's features mirrored into a game with graphic gameplay for the complete experience. The download is only about 4 MB but it offers a ton of gameplay... Some items. Trent Green is actually rated very highly by this game. Torry Holt turns out to be a stud. The stadium has THE wosrt rating in the league. The Ramma Lamma Ding Dome gets a 5 out of 100! Yowtch! You have to have better than average quarterbacking to win and it COSTS to have it. This is a great great game. It's terribly enlightening in that it sticks one in the management situation and confronts one with a great amount of situations and variables i.e. problems to be solved...and just like with the real game the solutions are not easily come by or sure in their outcome. Like I said I got shut out (I mean I literally couldn't get my team on the virtual field) of the playoffs because I had to have 4 active cornerbacks and with and injury bug I'd already been through 3-4 cuts, IR moves, and street FA picksup. I ran out of money... |
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