NFL Quarterback Club

"This Game Comes Up A Yard Short of Perfection"

NFL QB Club is the first football game I bought. I think if all football games were like this, I would buy a lot more. This game moves fast and it’s really fun. It isn’t very realistic because you can get SO many points against the best defense on the highest difficulty. Well, I don’t care if it’s realistic, as long as it’s football. Read on about it.

Graphics- The graphics are great. The fields look different from each other and the helmet logos on the play pick screen look EXACTLY like they did at the time the game was made. The crowd looked good, even if you didn’t see it very often. The only problem was the player size. They were too small for the size of the field. They were so small, the ball was bigger than their heads! Well, with the size of the players it had to be if you wanted to be able to see the ball. 7/10

Animations- The animations were great. Everything. You could tell what the players were doing so when the QB was throwing it didn’t look like they were running. The ref that did the penalty calls was very smooth. The best animation part was the thing they didn’t even need to use, the endzone dances. At the time this game was made that probably would have been real tough to do. Now, even though I don’t like this part, the halftime show guy was smooth and well... that’s the only thing I can say about it. Sometimes in the replay mode the ball motion wasn’t smooth though, which keeps the animations from getting a 10. 8/10

Sound- Although there wasn’t much of it, the music sounded great! It all seemed like stuff they would play on real life football game previews, etc. It didn’t play during the game itself, so it wouldn’t be distracting. The ref and announcer voices were awesome! It didn’t sound bad at all, like you might expect from a football game from this time. The sound FX were cool and realistic. They sounded like they were from a real football player too. 10/10

Options/Variety- You’re a fool if you don’t think this game offers a lot of options. The main menu offers 3 options: QB Challenge, Play NFL and Simulation. In the QB challenge, you can pick from the top QBs from the year before and create 5 of your own and put them in a competition, which tests how good they can do in certain areas. Play NFL lets you do an exhibition game, season, playoffs and the pro bowl. In exhibition, you can pick teams, QBs, weather, turf and how long quarters are. The season mode will keep going on FOREVER, so if you play a whole lot, you can catch up to where they are in real life! The playoff mode isn’t as customizable, you can’t pick all of the teams. The pro bowl is the all-star game. The simulation mode gives you the chance to relive 26 of the best games all-time and 4 of them in the future. Well, some of the ''future'' ones aren't exactly the future anymore... 10/10

Control- The game has great control. All of your football is down to 3 buttons. It’s easy to move but quickly changing directions is very difficult. Sometimes, if you are using the 6-button controller, I really can’t describe it, when you are holding down the button to move up, the game doesn’t think your pushing that button and you might go off to the side a little. It doesn’t seem like much, but you might run right into a defender you could easily dodge if it hadn’t happened. Also, when you intercept a ball it takes a while for the defender to try to return it so you normally won’t get much on the return. 7/10

Gameplay- This is exactly like football. The refs will be slightly favoring a team, and I’ll tell you, 99 out of 100 times it’s the computer team. You’ll be called for pass interference and unless it’s really bad, the computer won’t. The teams show the stats that you can see in the team selection. If it says they’re good at blitzing, make sure your QB is good at scrambling. One thing wrong is a few of the rules. You can catch the ball out of bounds if you’re diving, so you can kind of catch it out of bounds. You also CAN'T trick the other team. They will NEVER go offsides or stuff like that. The only case of ''trickery'' the other team is when you use some plays, everytime the reciever is wide open. 9/10

Replay Value- With the season mode that goes on FOREVER, you’ll want to keep playing. It also has so many options you’ll want to see all of the interesting matchups and games you can create. Seriously, you could read one word of this review per hour and you would get done before a person can complete all of the options. 10/10

The Bottom Line- It’s a great football game. No, not the most realistic at times but it is the best football game I’ve ever played. 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/17/02, Updated 02/17/02