"Not good enough for today's standards"

I bought this game the other day because I saw it at Best Buy for $10. I don't have any sports games on my DS yet, and I thought this would be nice to have. Let's get started.

Graphically, I'd say this game looks a lot like Madden '99 or so. The players are very big and blocky. The stadiums don't look too bad, in fact, compared to the players they look great! The uniforms on the players look terrible. You can see blobs that are like their logos and then some fugly numbers on the jerseys.

Sound on this game is not very good. There are comments from Al and John, but they are VERY far and few between, and it sounds like they just used old Madden quips from Madden '98. The sound effects for the game aren't bad at all, but in football you don't need a whole lot of sound effects. The crowd noise is ok too. And the music, well there seems to be one track, but you won't be on a menu screen very long anyway to hear it.

Ok, a few gripes. For one thing, the rosters on this version and the PS2 version are much different. That doesn't even make sense! Also, you can make changes to your roster, but they don't save. So when you power the game back on, you'll have to make ALL changes again. It's very annoying when you even have to reorder your depth chart every time you power up.

Another thing, it's VERY hard to figure out who to throw too and when in this game. If you look at the top screen, often times WR's will be out of your sight, or after they get far enough down field, it's almost impossible to see if they're open or not. To counteract this, the whole play takes place on the touch screen as well. You can look at this and see how many players are covering WR's, and even touch the WR to throw it to them. However, then you can't tell what kind of throw to use. Also, it seems that unless a WR is wide open, it's all a crap shoot anyway. I had a WR come down with the ball in triple coverage just as often as single coverage. No matter what the coverage, as long as they are covered I'd say you have about a 50% chance of completing the pass.

As for running the ball, you can forget it between the tackles... but to the outside... the only thing that can really stop you is yourself. That said, it seems like this game makes it almost impossible to completely run away from the defense, I've bursted outside many times with NO ONE around and get run down, that can be frustrating. But you'll have a very high average, so you'll be fine.

Ok, the touch screen. I rather like how they used it in this game. You can use it to select plays, call audibles, hot routes, throw to WR's, and you tap it for the kicking meter. You tap it once to aim, and again for power.

Outside of the game you can choose between a quick game, practice, situation, and season mode. There is no franchise, and not even multiple seasons. I find that VERY disapointing. I can understand no franchise, but not even multiple seasons? I think that's unacceptable.

The bottom line is, this game feels somewhat like a rush job. If you can find it at Best Buy like I did for $10, I'd say pick it up so you can have a football game to take with you. However, this is only a very average game, and anyone wanting some serious football on their DS needs to look at a different game. Overall this game is ok, not BAD, but certainly not GOOD either. Very, very average.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/01/06