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Let's just get this out of the way: NFL Fever is not a great football game. It has too many problems in too many areas to be a threat to any of the big boys of the digital gridiron. Its single-player mode can be frustrating, the player models are lumpy and odd looking, and the on-the-field gameplay achieves the impressive feat of feeling both too slow and too fast at the same time. But despite these rather glaring problems, there is one part of this game that shines like Eddie George's bald noggin. NFL Fever has the best online features of any football game on the market, bar none. Most of this is accomplished via the XSN Network, which does an impressive job of marrying your PC with your Xbox. Once signed up, you can create your own leagues, track your own stats, get downloadable content like roster updates, and talk smack via the Xbox Live headset. What is really neat about these features is the amount of user control that you have over your online experience. You can invite people to your league and set the league parameters (which teams are playable, the kinds of play conditions, public or private, etc.). It is also pretty easy to jump right into. There seemed to be plenty of public leagues, so if you don't have many friends with an Xbox you can still get up and going in a league pretty easily. The commissioner of the league determines a start date when the league opens. Each game between two gamers is given an end date. These two can play at any time before that end date. If both do not play that game within the given time, then a coin toss determines the winner. Standings and playoff seeds are tallied by XSN, which then puts together a playoff ladder. This all seems somewhat basic, but what it does is give you a real sense of urgency in your games when you go online. They mean something, even if it is only tying for third in your anonymous division. Your opponents will also be less inclined to do all the annoying stuff that we know people do when they are playing online. Cheaters and early-disconnecters can be bounced by the commish, so in general, expect that people will be better behaved (this is a relative thing, considering the general jerk-wad quotient of many online players) than they usually are in online games, although I am sure that the headset is still used to call people all kinds of interesting names.  The pass looked good, but it's intercepted. But despite all this online goodness, the game that it is based around is simply just not good enough. It does not quite fall into the category of unbearable dreck (or Cincinnati Bengal-ville), but it is still plagued with many of the same problems that gamers have been complaining about since this series came out two years ago. Next: Weird pace of gameplay » Page: 1 2 |
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