"Fun for both kids and adults but not without problems."

I always have a serious problem reviewing sports games because I never understood the appeal. If you want to play football or some other sport, I find that actually going out and playing the sport is infinitely preferable to sitting on your butt and manipulating a control pad. This is also a kid's game so that poses the additional problem of trying to figure out if the game is appropriate for the age group in question. With these thoughts in mind, I set out to review Backyard Football by Humongous Entertainment.

The game is targeted towards kids ages 5-10. What the kids do is set up their own team with players, name, and colors. Some of the players are from the professional league (Elway, Favre, Sanders, etc.) but most of the players are fictional characters made up for the game. I give credit to Humongous Entertainment for promoting diversity by having the other characters span the entire spectrum of race and gender. Each character has five categories of skills upon which they have a one to four rating with four being the highest. There is also a character generator that kids can use to create their own player. However, they are only allowed twelve points to allot to skills. Given that the weakest player that I had on my team had ten points allotted to skills, it is best to just use the pre-made players for the game.

The game can be played in single games or a league play which eventually culminates in the super colossal cereal bowl championship. The players have a choice between using the keyboard, mouse, and the joystick. Given the lack of any documentation of the controls and, since most of the kids that I know prefer the mouse, I went with the mouse to control the game.

During the game, the two announcers (Sunny Day and Chuck Downfield) keep up the chatter and make the pre-game, halftime, and post-game report. After a while, players may just keep Sunny on because, while she tells you information that you want to know, Chuck just rambles on.

Two variables that also come into play are weather and the ! play. The weather varies from sunny, rainy, and snowy. The weather doesn't really affect play too much but it does look good. Rain and snow just make the players move a little slower but not so much that it really affects anything. The ! Play is a bit more complex. You get these plays for pulling off a few plays in succession. This means that, if you have two or three offensive plays where you gain a lot of yards, you get an ! offensive play. The same is true for defense. These plays range from the useful such as the Sonic Boom (Offensive, you knock the other team off their feet.) to the semi-useless Chameleon (Defensive, your team wears the same colors as the opposing team. The computer never falls for it.). These plays add a bit of spice to the game and bring in a bit of the unexpected to the game.

So, it all comes down to how well the game plays. Well, I found the game challenging and that is, ironically enough, a minus for the game. As I said in the beginning, I'm not big into sports games but, even on the easiest level, I found that I was still winning only half of the games. I think that the challenge level might be a little high for kids who are only five to ten years old. I think part of this may be that I suspect that the pro's stats are higher than what they are shown to be. My quarterback has about the same stats as John Elway but John still completed more passes than my quarterback did. When I looked at my overall record, it came out that I would barely lose to the pro teams where I trounced all of the made-up teams. Also, I noticed that, when I was winning, my receivers would fumble more and, when I was losing, they would never fumble. While this serves as an equalizer for the beginner, this hinders the kids from ever improving at the game.

One last minor strike against the game has to do with the control. The receivers have a fairly large "field" around them that the cursor changes to a pass play until the QB or the halfback passes the line of scrimmage. This means that, on plays like a QB bootleg, you can be stuck between throwing the ball away or watching as your halfback charges mindlessly into the defensive line. It would have been nice to have some way to avoid this problem.

Despite these complaints, this is a game that I would recommend because it is easy to learn and it is surprisingly fun. This is a game that the casual player can get into as well as their kids. The graphics are clear and the plays are simple enough for the children to understand but complex enough for them to feel like they are the coach of whichever team they happen to be playing. The game also brings across the atmosphere of Monday night football expertly. When you're playing the game, you get the feel of being both a coach and a spectator at home. Also, I do applaud the diversity of the game's players. Whether it is realistic to have a kid in a wheelchair get body-tackled by my linemen or not, this gives kids a better picture of the world than it would to have an all white or black male lineup. Giving kids the tools to appreciate differences in people, without having diversity shoved down their throats, is important in a child's development. And, as I said, this is a fun game that adults may find themselves sneaking a game in when the kids are in bed. Overall, I'd give this game an 8.4 which rounds the game out to an 8.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/07/06