- Online compatible
- Retains last year’s great graphics
- Dick Stockton is out as play-by-play announcer
- Too arcadey to satisfy most
hard-core football video gamers
- Ron Pitts still does the color(less) commentary
- CPU artificial intelligence is either too easy or too hard
(depending on the setting) and never falls into that “just
right” challenge level
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NFL
Fever 2003
Score: 7.8 / 10
Sports games are an important feature to
video game console sales success, and Microsoft naturally realized this
before launching its Xbox late in 2001. Although it already knew that
Electronic Arts would be porting the top-selling Madden series from the
PS2, Microsoft decided it would go the route that Sony decided on when
it entered the console wars in the mid-90’s by creating their own
in-house studio to develop a line of sports titles. The Xbox’s initial
first-party sports game was NFL Fever 2002. It was impressive when
stacked against the first-party football titles: much better than Sony’s
NFL GameDay 2002 for both the PS2 and PSX but not quite as good as
Sega’s NFL 2K2 for the Dreamcast.
It also did unexpectedly well sales-wise against third-party Madden
2002, even though it wasn’t nearly as polished as Madden. Maybe those
strong sales had something to do with the fact that many of the game and
system bundle purchases that were required to get your hands on a Xbox
when it released last year contained NFL Fever 2002. But this year is a
whole new ballgame, as NFL Fever 2003 has to contend with both Madden
2003 and NFL 2K3 without the bundling
advantage that it had last year. So how
does it stack up against its fierce Xbox football competition? Fever
2003 again is a good showing amongst the first-party contingent, but
isn’t so hot when lined up against either of the two better Xbox
choices, Madden 2003 and NFL 2K3.
There are a lot of good features in the NFL Fever 2003 package. The
graphics are again done consistently well. The stadium, crowd,
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and field visuals are obviously using the Xbox’s quality rendering power
and the player animations perform realistic moves, although surprisingly
the actual players aren’t quite the quality of either Madden 2003 or NFL
2K3, especially the facial details of individual players. While the
on-field sounds are comparable, out of the three new NFL football titles
on the market Fever 2003 by far has the best stadium audio aura
surrounding it. The crowd sounds like an actual
NFL-stadium-filled-to-capacity audience.
There is also a change in the virtual commentary booth, with the steady
Kevin Calabro replacing the awful play-by-play of Dick Stockton from
Fever 2002. While the comments of Calabro aren’t anything overly
special, it seems that most of his declarations usually fit what’s
happening on the field, which didn’t always happen with Stockton. The
color(less) commentary of Ron Pitts inexplicably returns in Fever 2003,
and it really appears that all the terrible voice-work he did for Fever
2002 has just been recycled here. Quite simply Pitts is the pits of 2003
football video gaming color commentary.
Fever 2003’s controls are very responsive, particularly on defense.
Tackling is much stickier and hard-hitting than the frustrating
slippery/elusive scheme in Madden 2003, where seemingly hemmed-in or
contained players find all types of ways to break out of tackles. On the
offensive side, the excellent running controls that allow a running back
to squeeze through holes in the offensive line (instead of being stuck
in a perpetual jogging-in-place stasis) returns. But the biggest
improvement is in Fever 2003’s passing game. While it still isn’t as
good as its competitors, at least this year’s Fever’s passing attack
gives you confidence in throwing the pigskin. Last year, when a ball was
thrown, it almost seemed to be traveling in slow motion on its way to
the receiver, giving the defense plenty of time to react to the ball.
This year, while the ball still seems to have a little too much air
under it, at least it gets to your intended target more expediently.
Okay, so you may be asking yourself after reading up to this point,
“Hey, this game doesn’t sound too bad. Why does this guy think it isn’t
up to either Madden 2003 or NFL 2K3’s standards?” The answer is simple:
Fever 2003 has an extremely unintelligent artificial intelligence that
brings the game completely down. This is the most glaring problem in a
game vying for top stop in a competitive field better grasp on how to
create a realistic, NFL-worthy AI. The CPU-assisted defense on your team
is idiotic, rarely helping out your human-controlled players to stop the
other team.
Fever 2003 (and 2002) has the feel of an arcade-style game out of the
NFL Blitz mold. There’s no way you should be able to have two human
players consistently put 60-plus points on the board in a game against
each other. You shouldn’t be able to turn a two-yard screen pass to your
running back into 80-yard scores on first down on a regular basis, but
invariably it happens in Fever 2003. One of the most annoying happenings
on defense is when you switch to the nearest defender on a thrown ball.
This is supposed to allow you to take control of the closest defender
covering the intended receiver, which it indeed does. But when you
switch, it causes the player to stop in his tracks, giving the receiver
valuable separation from your defender and usually results in an easy
and irritating-for-you catch and score.
In single-player match-ups you might think that changing the difficulty
level would overcome this, but then the game becomes too hard. The CPU
opponent becomes too tough particularly on defense, where even if you
have the juggernaut offense of the Rams it’s impossible to pick up
yardage against the CPU-controlled team. There is a completely uneven
difficulty balance in Fever 2003. It’s either too easy or too hard,
never achieving a just-right challenge equilibrium that allows you to
win with a good game-plan while at the same time building up a good
nervous sweat combating a tough-but-not-always-impossible CPU challenge.
Nowadays, if you don’t have a dynasty and general manager mode built
into your football game, you might as well not publish it. Microsoft
brings these features to the table. Let’s face it: while the extras of
Fever 2003 compare to what’s in NFL 2K3, nobody can do the goodies like
EA and its more intrinsically detailed features stuffed into its Madden
series. I did have a lot of fun with Fever 2003’s classic challenge,
though. This allows you to pick your favorite team and enter into a
classic tournament against seven of the best teams of all time. Think
you have what it takes to bring down Vince Lombardi’s Packers or Mike
Ditka’s Bears? You’ll find out if you are up to the challenge. Once you
defeat a team in the challenge mode, you will unlock that team for
single-game play. The only downside with the classic teams is the lack
of actual names identifying the classic team players, but you’ll be able
to figure out most of these well-known football greats by their number
and position.
The biggest addition to Fever 2003 is the online gameplay that
unfortunately won’t be available until November 15 when Xbox Live,
currently undergoing beta testing, is officially ready for public
consumption. (Fever 2003 is actually one of the two games currently beta
testing the Xbox Live service.) Potentially, this could have a big
impact on how Fever 2003 really stacks up against either Madden 2003 or
NFL 2K3. But without a way to compare the online aspect of the
respective games at this point, based on its off-line capabilities Fever
2003 trails behind each of those two titles.
Considering the whole package, NFL Fever 2003 is a relatively good pro
football title with but a few areas that need improvement. Unfortunately
it has to compete for sales against two better games, Madden 2003 and
NFL 2K3. Even if online compatibility is a big selling point to you, NFL
Fever 2003 still doesn’t have enough to hurdle over NFL 2K3 in that
category. I’ll use a common sports adage to sum up NFL Fever 2003:
“Better luck next year.” Microsoft needs to balance out its AI challenge
level, correct some gameplay issues and boost its features in NFL Fever
2004 if it ever wants any chance of beating out the Madden and NFL 2K
series.
