|
|
             |
|
|
|
||
|
Platform: Xbox Genre: Sports Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Microsoft Game Studio ESRB: E (Everyone) Released: August 2002 Support AE! Buy Games Here:
Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly. Enter E-Mail Address Below: |
NFL Fever 2003Score: 7.8 / 10 |
||
|
Pros: -
Online compatible -
Retains last year’s great graphics - Dick Stockton is out as play-by-play announcer
|
Cons: -
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
|
Related Links: Review: NCAA Football 2003 (XBox) Review: Madden 2003 (Playstation 2)
|
|
|
"But the biggest improvement is in Fever 2003’s passing game."
|
|||
|
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, 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.
-
Lee Cieniawa
Search for Related Topics:
...More Sports Game Reviews...
...More Reviews of Games Developed/Published by Microsoft... |
|||
