ESPN NFL 2K5 – Review

American Football, does anybody care in Europe about that sport? Apparently so as the new NFL 2K5 has been released in Europe a couple of months ago. It’s going to be the last in the original ESPN series as the license now belongs to Electronic Arts. Now we have two reasons to go along with this review; we do have NFL fans who want to read a NFL review plus it’s worth mentioning as it’s the last real ESPN NFL games. Kicking off…

Gameplay
The best kick off is starting the tutorial mode to learn all about American Football. And if we say all, we mean all. The tutorial mode is way too overloaded with learning the controls, techniques, rules and so on. I wouldn’t blame you if you forgot half of it as this mode is really extended. Okay, I admit that I’m not a football professor and hardly play such videogames and perhaps for the more experience player this mode isn’t really necessary, but for a rookie like me it was a must to conquer the tactics and techniques through training. Listen carefully to the coach and try to do your best handling the controls. It may take some time before you’re able to please the coach but keep on practicing, the sooner you’re able to play some decent matches. For those we have no knowledge about the NFL gameplay, here’s a very short explanation. A football playfield has the size of 100 yards long, 91.5 meters. On every five yards there’s a line plus so called hash marks, numbers to mark the yards on the field. At both sides there are end zones, the area to make a nice touchdown. A touchdown is worth six points. Behind the end zone is a goal post which is worth three points or after a touchdown one extra point. It is up to the team to get into the end zone as soon as possible and scoring points. To do this you have three attempts to make ten yards towards the end zone, if successful the team can have another turn to conquer the next ten yards and so on till the points are counted on the scoreboard.

The most striking and biggest feature is the franchise mode. As a general manager you take control over one of the 32 teams and going to make a lot of choices regarding training sessions, which players to buy sell or exchange and other decisions a manager has to make. Keep an eye on the budget and don’t forget to extend or cancel contracts in time. The main goal of the franchise mode is to create a very strong team which makes it to the top: Super Bowl! This mode can go on for many years, but are you able to keep your team in perfect condition and manage the business of American Football for years? Good luck! I couldn’t do it and was more active in the practice, tournament and anniversary mode. The anniversary mode is an extra feature thanks to the 25th anniversary of ESPN. Repeat history and play one of the 25 memorable gaming moments in history. It’s not hard to achieve as you’re being told what to do, it’s just a question of good timing to succeed.

Did somebody kicked a ball against my head? No this is for real, a crib feature in a sports game. Turn a house into a marvellous palace including a Trophy room, a home cinema and a very important item; the celebrity phone. Superstars are going to ring and challenge you for a game of football. But first you need to earn lots of crib points to buy all kinds of furniture and art to spice up your crib which suits a superstar. Crib points can be earned by winning crib challenges and making excellent moves such as scoring touchdowns with the same football player or exceeding the 300 yards in total per game. Trade the crib points in for some luxurious items which are published in a catalog. Nothing really spectacular to choose from though.

Graphics
ESPN is the most spectacular sports channel in America and focuses on NBA (Basketball), NHL (Ice Hockey) and of course NFL (American Football). In total they have forty TV stations, radio stations and internet sites providing the latest and live sport reports. The reason why I’m telling you this is that you’re starring in one of their shows, no wait this whole game seems to be a sports show. The TV presentation is great and even while the game is loading, a TV reporter covers the facts of the upcoming game to play and afterwards the camera zooms in to the enthusiastic fans and cheerleaders. It’s show time. The game is graphically very realistic in every single way. The players moves are fluently visualized and the animations are good especially those when there’s interaction with the fans, players giving high fives or a ball to a fan who totally freaks out. There’s also a possibility to get a closer look on the field by playing in first person perspective. Become one of the boys and see how close they play together and experience that not many moves can be made due to the lack of space. It’s fun to watch it that close and gives the best view of the players

Sound
Nothing to complain about the music and most defiantly not about the voices! Hear the players on the field yelling to each other, listen how the crowd is cheering up the team and thank goodness the commentators do have a sense of humour. The whole sound package but is a tribute to the game and provides a stimulating vibe to keep on playing or to make spice up your tactics and techniques. Okay, there aren’t any original soundtracks used but that prevents getting bored or don’t likings the songs. Just nice beats!

Female gaming angle
As I started the review with a question if somebody in Europe cares about this game. I most definitely know that this isn’t a game suited for a large number of girls. In Europe the number of female games are based on a guessed ratio of 1 to 10000. The in game female contribution is based on cheering up the game either as cheerleader or as fan. And no it’s not possible to use your mascara to make black stripes below your eyes, steal a football outfit and try to sneak onto the field to replace a player. It’s a men’s game. But I keep on wondering if the developers designed that crib feature to please the few girls who play the game…

Conclusion
Whether you believe it or not, NFL 2k5 really surprised me as soon as it started. It’s got a good interface it’s surprisingly realistic, the graphics are great and even if you’re not a fan of the sports, it rocks. It’s actually a shame that the ESPN license has been sold to EA, otherwise the developers could have made many more different kind of sports games, that’s what they’re good at and a shame if it gets ruined. Nevertheless if you’re a football gaming fan you can enjoy this game for many hours and it won’t loose its reply value quickly, even new NFL games will get published. It’s a quality sports game! Challenge that!

Review by Wencke
Thumb Bandits European Correspondent & manager of GGU.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment