Review: NFL 2010
by Staff Writer
August 14, 2009
Overview
NFL 2010 is the first full featured football (alliteration) game to enter the App Store. All 32 NFL teams are included with their actual rosters. Every aspect of a typical game is incorporated allowing you to play football with your favorite team anywhere. You can play through the entire 2010 schedule all the way to the Super Bowl. Pick precise plays from the deluxe playbooks as you march through the league. There are 3D rendered players and stadiums to witness the action, and virtual control stick and buttons to control it.
Features
Four gameplay modes are included: quick play, exhibition, season, and playoffs. In quick play it’s a randomly generated game that puts you right into the action. Exhibition allows you to choose the two teams that are playing. Season mode provides the entire 2010 schedule to play with your favorite team. Finally playoffs allows you to jump into the opening round of the playoffs and play through the Super Bowl. In the game you can choose the quarter length: two, five or eight minute quarters. There are three difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. The playbook is scrollable by cover flow, as are most of the selections in game.
Another feature is the deluxe playbooks. You can choose the basic playbook giving you running or throwing plays or opt for the advanced playbook. In the advanced playbook you can choose singleback, iform, shotgun, etc. Then under singleback for example you can choose normal slot, two TightEnds, or four WideRecievers. Each set has 5-10 plays with a few running and passing each.
To move your player there is a virtual control stick instead of the typical gameloft d-pad which is nice. To pass to a receiver, icons pop up over each receiver, and you tap on the icon you want to throw to. The rest of the game is controlled by action buttons that pop up during play, and the action slows down to give you time to press the button.
While running, occasionally three action buttons appear: juke, spin, or truck. While on defense if you’re rushing the passer you can use spin or club, and while the ball is in the air you can swat or go for the interception. When kicking (either the kickoff, punting, or field goals) an accuracy and power meter come on screen.
According to gameloft, in the next update there will be head to head connectivity over wifi and bluetooth, and gameloft live will be incorporated. Also included will be a customizable RSS feed of NFL news, and a special matchup mode of zombies vs. skeletons. There is a meet Ray Lewis Contest too, just become a fan of gameloft on Facebook, and go to the NFL Contest Tab, and all the rules and details are there.
The Good
The graphics are good for the iPhone, and provide a great football experience. The players are fully rendered in 3D, but look a bit cubeish. There a few different stadiums, not a replica of all 32, but there are a couple open and domed versions. The animations are about average shown by tackling where one player falls forward and the other player falls backward. Every tackle is an absolute crush, and occasionally the ball carrier is flipped completely over. There are a few different catch animations with leaping one hand, diving to the ground, and being up-ended on the catch. As your play gains distance the camera zooms in on the action. The player motion is pretty smooth, whether it’s Tomlinson breaking to the end zone, or Vincent Jackson receiving a touchdown. The sounds are a nice addition. There is an announcer who tells the down & distance, the formation you’re in, and when there’s a score. The sounds from the field are included with smashing tackles, breaking the huddle, and whistles. In the menus, and in play selection there are a couple different hip hop beats.
There actually is a save system! If you’re in the middle of the game, and you have to quit, just go to the pause screen, and quit to the season menu, and the in-game progress will be saved. If you save once this way the game will then save automatically at each quarter end. This is an awesome addition, and really needed because I don’t know who will have time to play through an entire game in one sitting.
The gameplay is fun, and what more could you ask for. When I first played this game I absolutely hated it, but the longer I played the more I liked it. The controls take awhile to get used to, but give it time. You will pick-up the few extras you need to do, like moving the control stick to catch the ball, and little things like that. The save system took awhile to figure out too, but it’s great.
With tons of plays to choose from it feels like authentic football. Also good is the coach cam to view your play or make pre-snap defensive adjustments. When back to throw, the icons over the receivers change from red to yellow to green depending on how open the receiver is. Running, passing, rushing the passer, and going for interceptions is fun, and I’m loving it more and more every time I play.
There is a lot to do with this game. Just playing through one season will take quite awhile with 16 games plus playoffs. After completing the season you may not want to play it again though, because it will be the same 2010 season, but you can play as another team. The best aspect is that you can play football over and over again.
The Bad
The controls don’t work all the time. Sometimes the directional pad is pointing straight up, but the player doesn’t run straight up the sideline, but instead veers out of bounds. Passing is frustrating with sometimes it recognizing the wrong receiver icon because they’re kind of bunched together. Then on the pass it usually is an overthrow with no way to control the strength of the throw.
After playing for awhile I’ve found the control automatically switches to the receiver as the ball approaches so if you move the control stick towards the ball right before the receiver catches it he will more likely catch it. Most passes though remove any chance of RAC or YAC (Run or Yards after catch) because the player stops to catch the ball.
While running the ball, very rarely do the action buttons pop up, so most of the time you run the ball straight ahead for a few yards. The defense isn’t very engaging since there is no tackle button, so the game automatically tackles if you’re in close enough proximity to the ball carrier. Another problem is that there’s no sim game option so you have to play all 16 games, unless you go straight to playoff mode.
The AI does some pretty stupid things that aren’t very accurate. The first game I played went into OT, and my opponent made it in the red zone, but on 4th down they went for it instead of kicking the field goal. Then another time they ran out the clock when they were down by three. There were a few other instances of going for it on 4th down in weird situations and bad clock management.
Scrolling through the playbook is easy, but selecting different plays and sets is difficult. As you’re going through the cover flow, instead of tapping on the large album like set or play you have to tap the little triangle next or back button. It would be much easier if you could just tap the set, then play, but instead it’s much more difficult to get through all of the included plays.
