Bring out the stretcher. Review

Bring out the stretcher.

Being nearly the beginning of football season, every game company and their

mom is releasing a football game to try and cash in on a little football fever.

989 Studios’ bid is the inferior NFL GameDay 2003 for the PS2. While

it doesn’t have the flashy graphics, sound, or production value of other games

out there, GameDay doesn’t have the gameplay, options or Artificial Intelligence

either. If there’s an award for making the weakest football game on the market,

then by God, 989 Studios just earned it.

The

first indication that GameDay is less than a quality product is the cover

art on the package. It features last year’s hero Tom Brady striking a passing

pose with his tongue out and a retarded look on his face. Are 989 Studios actually

mocking their own product? Why does Brady look so stupid, aside from being in

a Patriots uniform? Confusing, but not impressive.

The modes are about as generic as they get (except for Bonker Jerks mode!

Which is exciting and revolutionary, and not actually included in the game).

Instead, you can play Pre-season, Season, Tournament, and General Manager.

In General Manager mode you get to manage the affairs of your favorite football

team, including signing free agents and drafting college players. In a nice

move, you can draft players from 989’s NCAA

Gamebreaker into this game, though that’s quickly becoming a standard feature

in pro games.

Tournament mode allows you to make a custom bracket which you and your friends can compete in. Assuming you have any friends after exposing them to this game, you can then go over to their houses and play their better football games.

The gameplay is hampered by a low framerate, the lousiness of which is compounded

by crappy graphics. The stadiums look fine, but the players and the gridiron

itself look like robots and a giant blob of green Jello, respectively. Not to

mention lovely little details like the way your quarterback slows down to throw

the ball, even when being pursued by a gang of defensive linemen. Compared to

the efforts seen in the Madden and 2K games, GameDay looks

like the kid brother with acne.

The running game suffers from sluggish controls. Guys go from “blocked” to

“on your ass” in about one frame. The period between pressing a button and seeing

the result seems about twice as long as in other games. Better stick to the

air.

Passing

suffers from the same fate as the Gamebreaker title. Go ahead and throw

into four defenders – you stand as good a chance of completing the pass as if

you threw into single coverage. Also, thanks to GameDay‘s horrible resolution,

actually figuring out what the coverage is downfield is really difficult.

So it’s a good thing that the secondary is completely useless, because otherwise

GameDay would be unplayable. The only thing that ever seems to have any

impact defensively is bringing lots of outside heat; these guys move fast and

the quarterbacks move slow, which makes sacks a pretty common occurrence with

the right pressure.

Why anyone would want to incriminate themselves as being closely involved in making this game is beyond me, but 989 Studios included a DVD extra of themselves making this game. I don’t want to give the whole thing away, but it involves a couple partially digested chili-dogs, a fat guy, and an Oakland Coliseum bathroom. Yuck.

Though the PS2 just went online a few days ago, the GR crew has had several

experiences with GameDay‘s online component and it holds up surprisingly

well. Connecting to a server and getting started is easy enough, and the game

supports a USB keyboard for full typing. Given, we’ve already had online football

experiences way back on the Dreamcast, but it’s good being able to point out

at least one bright spot in this otherwise dull game.

Of course, when the gameplay and graphics are this unimpressive, the multiplayer

is sort of negligible. As the competition pulls further and further away, GameDay

is quickly becoming a punchline, a sad fate for a series that at one point was

at the top of the pile.