As good a job the guys have done of making the game more realistic, there are still far too many instances of stupidity that clog up this otherwise excellent simulation of the sport. For instance, on kickoffs and punts the kicker runs down the field way too fast. On most plays the kicker was one of the first, if not the first, guys to reach the ball carrier. If anything, you want to keep your kicker out of the action unless he absolutely is the last line of defense you have left. I managed to rack up about 17 tackles with my kicker Steve Christie in one season, that’s rather unsettling if you ask me.
Speaking of the kicking game, it’s probably the worst of the bunch. It features an arrow that moves back and forth, you need to push the button in order to stop it in the direction that you wish to kick it. Again, this makes it feel like an arcade game as opposed to a simulation. There’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be able to select the direction or orientation of my kick, it just makes absolutely not sense at all. This is especially bad when you’re trying to kick a last second field goal with the clock running out, in other games you’d be able to aim and get it off, in
Fever you have to wait for the arrow to arrive at the point that’s close to your liking.
Each of the player models have received a significant amount of detail. There’s a problem though, although they look nice they look highly unrealistic. Imagine if every single player in the NFL took steroids for 2 weeks straight and you can begin to envision what these guys look like. They are beautiful though and feature tons of little details that appear in the other games, but aren’t as refined as they are here. Simple things like stadium reflections on helmets just look absolutely amazing here and are much more cleaner and crisp than the competition’s versions. But again, their bulkiness really ruins the total package. They make the players in
NFL Blitz look like a bunch of pansies. Everyone looks much more built than they should be and they sometimes look absolutely ridiculous on the replays.
The models aren’t perfect though, as nice as they may look in the screenshots they’re absolutely terrible when they’re moving. While the animation isn’t as bad as
Gameday’s (then again, what is?) they’re certainly not going to win any awards. Their deficiencies become even more apparent on the replays when you realize that the players could have benefited from a few more frames of animation. Tackles in particular could use a lot more work. You don’t really get that hardnosed, in-your-face, bone-crunching, “damn that had to hurt” feeling from the tackles in the game. Instead you get a more sissified version of
Madden and
NFL2K3’s tackles, they just don’t look painful enough and the collision detection seem to be quite a ways off. How can I feel like I’m punishing a RB if it looks like I’m just giving him a small nudge every time he carries the ball up field? Of course the absence of group tackles (another big inclusion in this year’s games) hurts the game even more. The animation in this game is really needs some refining. Everyone runs the same, this means that the O-line looks just like your wide-receiving corps, just with insanely larger guts.
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