While Fever hasn't quite caught up to it's competitors, it's a lot closer than anyone expected. It's officially a three man race.
It's been almost a year since Microsoft got their feet wet in the crucial market of football video games with NFL Fever 2002. This year's game builds slightly on that effort and offers a fun, beautiful and deep game of football. It took Fever's competitors years to get this far in terms of gameplay, graphics and overall feeling and while it's clear that Microsoft Game Studios isn't quite ready to overtake EA or Sega on the gridiron, there's no denying that they've made it a three-man race.
The worth of a sports game starts and ends with gameplay, and Fever offers a worthy balance between simulation and entertainment. You won't find yourself struggling to grind out every first down, but you also won't see receivers with rocket-pack jumping ability. And you can decide for yourself how realistic you want the game to be, because the difficulty levels in this game, unlike many others, actually make a difference.
For instance, the passing game can be as difficult as you want it to be. On the Rookie level, you'll get a lot more open receivers, with confused corners giving up circus catches, than you'll find on Veteran. The Rookie level allows far too many completions on bombs. Generally speaking, unless you're in the mood for a basketball-score fiasco you're better off skipping the Rookie level altogether and starting with Veteran. Even on the highest difficulty, Fever's passing game will seem unrealistic to some. It is a little easier than real football, and your quarterbacks will end up with ratings higher than real-world football players could produce. But it's not ridiculous, it's just a few more big plays per week. That's all it takes to inflate stats just a little and turn a simulation into a "slightly-higher-scoring" simulation.
In other words, you still have to run the ball. When it comes to running, Fever might be a little bit too hard. Even the biggest holes in the line get filled up quickly by streaking linebackers and linemen that slip off blocks at the perfect time. This forces you to get intimately familiar with the running control options, because you're going to need all of them. Running with the ball is natural and realistic. Gone are the days when the players look like puppets with bad hips running in one place. Cutting, juking, spinning and stiff-arming all look like the real-thing and they have lifelike effects on the outcome of the play.
The defensive AI is strong, and you won't see yourself pulling off the same plays over and over. Cornerbacks don't act like blind men the minute the ball goes near them, linebackers don't fall for the same thing repeatedly and linemen don't run right past a ball carrier unless there's a darn good reason. While playing defense, it's incredibly challenging to get through almost anyone's offensive line consistently. That's okay for those who like a realistic sack count, but if you enjoy controlling a lightning quick linebacker every play and headhunting the quarterback, you'll be disappointed. You'll also get scored on more than my sister as the game already slightly favors passing and the computer does a good job of finding the receiver you left open in favor of rushing the quarterback.
But the AI does need work in the area of play calling. The computer offers you a recommended formation and play for every down, and the suggestions seem misguided more often than not. (Of course, what armchair quarterback doesn't think they're smarter than a computer, real athletes and coaches?) On the other side of the coin, I noticed the computer lining up to specifically stop my called play far, far too often. This forces you to learn the audible system early on, but it still seems too convenient.
What's also curious are the team and player ratings. There are a few standouts, but most ratings are very similar. The AFC and NFC Pro Bowl teams are rated 86 and 89, respectively (max being 100). There are no powerhouses and no completely hopeless teams. Most of the players and teams fall in the same general range, which I assume is an attempt at showing the parity seen in the real-life NFL. I can appreciate that, but it seems strange to have the high-powered Rams rate an 84 with the pathetic Lions at 78. All of this can be remedied when you take over as General Manager, of course, but it's still curious, to say the least.
Which leads us nicely into the game's feature set. The big draw is dynasty mode, which allows you to control the inner workings of a team for up to 25 seasons. Trades, drafts, contract negotiations and the looming salary cap are part of your life now. You can even mold the Bears into a run-and-gun team if that floats your boat. Creating players and playbooks has never been done better than it is in Fever, and those two features go a long way to personalizing your dynasty. You can also select more than one team to control, so if you're up for it you can compete against your friends long-term.
There's also a practice mode, and once you take a player through some drills (which helps you learn the controls), you'll be able to try out different plays on the practice field. You can also get a quick lesson in football X's and O's with "Chalk Talk," a brief narrative that does a good, if superficial job of explaining the basics of the game. Both features are nice additions for those new to football, but most veterans won't get much out of them. The "Classic Challenge" is a chance to unlock storied teams from the past by beating those teams. It's a neat idea and a nice feature.
Another interesting idea is Fever's "Dynamic Player Performance." During a season, players can raise or lower their ratings based on their performance. A hot receiver that has a good game, for example, could bump up his rating by a few points. It could drop back down later, of course, and a bad game could take him below his original level. It's one way of representing the momentum of the sport-players and teams have a habit of taking baggage with them from one game to the next.
The announcing, voiced by Kevin Calabro and Ron Pitts, is somewhat disappointing. It's not their fault; the calls are interesting and entertaining, they're just wrong far too often. One good run at the end of a game dominated by defense can yield comments like, "The defense has to find a way to stop that sooner or later," or "They need to make some adjustments." Even worse, the same handful of calls are played repeatedly over the menu music, so instead of background music you get the same calls over and over again the whole time. It's hard enough writing a song that doesn't get annoying after being played a million times (see: "That Thing You Do"), why add talking to make things worse? At least the in-game calls are no more repetitive than other sports games.
One area in which Fever takes a back seat to no game is graphics. Player models and movements are smooth and incredibly natural, both in appearance and control. Running, jumping, diving and even blocking never looked better. Uniforms get dirty (in different places every game), snow piles up and gets pushed around and the reflections off players' helmets seem lifted right from NFL films.
The replays look fantastic. They appear after a play a little too often for my taste, because I like to keep things moving, but that's certainly a matter of preference. A nice added touch comes at the end of each game when a recap of the highlights flashes before your very eyes. It's almost as good as Sportscenter.
Online play will be available through Xbox Live, but we won't know what that means until this fall when the service launches. If you've got broadband now or see online games in your future, that limits your NFL shopping decision to Fever and Sega's NFL 2k3.
It's impossible to talk about NFL Fever without comparisons, and this year's version is a fine game that stands up well to the competition. The market here is very tough, with EA's Madden and Sega's NFL 2k3 representing the cream of the crop and the result of years of high popularity and slowly evolving, almost always improving gaming goodness. Microsoft hasn't caught up to their competitors yet, but they're on the way. Fever has earned their audience, and only time will tell what affect Xbox Live may have. Look out, these boys of autumn are here to stay.
