NFL 2K
Dreamcast
Nostalgia Factor:
307 reviews into this blog, and believe it or not, this is the first team sports game I have reviewed. I’m actually a pretty big football fan, with the peak of my fandom being back in the late 90s and early 2000s. I had several NFL video games back then, including some Madden and GameDay titles. While I liked those games, none of them blew me away like NFL2K for the Dreamcast. The technological leap from PlayStation 1 to Dreamcast was a pretty big one, and it definitely showed in the quality of this title.
The graphics, the presentation, the commentary, the controls – everything seemed leaps and bounds better than any football game I’d played for the PS1. I remember having to show this game off to anyone and everyone who cared. “Whoah, look at this game! Just look at it!” One comment that stuck out to me is when my brother’s girlfriend at the time said she loved how the players butts looked in this game. That kind of took me by surprise and made me laugh. It wasn’t even something I’d considered before.
If I had a log of all the hours I’ve spent playing football video games in my life, NFL2K would easily, easily be number one on that list. I played this game relentlessly. It wouldn’t surprise me if you told me I played a full regular season with each and every team in the league, and I’m not even kidding. I was obsessed with this game.
I kind of got mad at football video games in general and stopped playing them after the 2K series was canceled. To this day, I still consider the first 2K game to be the greatest and most influential and significant NFL game ever created. Over 20 years later, would my opinion still hold true? Let’s find out!
Story:
You control football players as they play football. Huzzah!
Gameplay:
When the game begins, there are several modes for you to choose from. Practice, tournament, exhibition, fantasy, regular season, etc. Exhibition is great if you’re playing head-to-head with a friend, but I’ve only bothered to concern myself with regular season mode. On my most recent playthrough of this game, I picked the Packers and stormed through the regular season, advancing to the playoffs and winning the Super Bowl in the process. Be warned, the game doesn’t start you out on “normal” difficulty, they start you off on easy (rookie) mode. I was wondering why I was destroying my opponents 60 something to 0 every single game before I decided to go into the game’s settings where I saw it was set to rookie. After turning the difficulty up to its regular (pro) setting, things were much trickier for me from then on out. Passing became a lot tougher, running the ball became very difficult, and I wasn’t sacking the opposing quarterback every other play of the game. Defense was still pretty easy for me. The only points I ever gave up were when the computer aired it out and scored some kind of long, fluky touchdown against me. But things were a lot more balanced and games became a lot more difficult to win. My favorite win of the regular season was against the Seahawks where I fell behind 17-10 with under two minutes left in the game after Joey Galloway scored an 84 yard touchdown on 3rd and forever. With all my struggles on offense, I thought I was toast. But I was able to conduct a quick and efficient two minute drive to tie the game with 3 seconds left. In overtime, I won the toss and marched down the field to set up the winning field goal. I thought FOR SURE I had lost that game on many different occasions.
NFL2K controls and handles like most other football games, although some of the things it brought to the table were new for its time. Let’s talk about defense first. You’ve got a meter to determine the length of your kicks. An arrow to determine the direction. You can switch back and forth between defensive players. Holding down the A button on the controller charges up a meter that makes you faster and makes you hit harder when you’re tackling an opponent. The Y button makes your defender jump and/or make a play for an interception. Before your opponent calls up their offensive play, you can pick which defensive alignment you want to trot out onto the field. Just hitting A without pressing in any direction brings up the “coach’s recommendation” for what you should do on defense. I found that it never really mattered what defense I picked, so I always just went with that. Pre-snap, you can move your defenders around on the field, as long as they don’t cross over the line of scrimmage. Playing as the Packers, I always picked Vonnie Holliday since he was the team’s best defensive lineman at the time. I’d line him up RIGHT next to Gilbert Brown and immediately start bum rushing the center the second the ball was snapped. On rookie difficulty, this resulted in a sack almost 50% of the time. On higher difficulty settings, it didn’t generate too many sacks but it did force the QB into some bad decisions.
After the ball is in the air, hitting the B button moves you to the closest defender. Controlling that defender, you’ve got to break up the pass by jumping after the ball or trying to intercept it. This caused some issues for me from time to time, as I’d end up switching to the wrong player and tackling the receiver before the ball arrived, resulting in a penalty. This happened more times than I care to admit. Overall, though, defense was pretty easy for me to grasp. When your opponent runs the ball, you barely have to do anything because your computer controlled teammates just SWARM the ball handler.
Offense is where the game actually gets tricky. On rookie difficulty, I had no problems moving the ball through the air or on the ground. In fact, I’d say it was too easy. When I switched to pro difficulty, I was in for a rude awakening. Even though I’d only shifted the difficulty level up one notch, it was as if I’d shifted it up by 20. Unless you’re pitching the ball outside, your run plays get stuffed more often than not. My receivers were just getting blanketed on every single play. I was throwing picks left and right. I got sacked a lot. I came very close to getting shut out on multiple occasions. It took me a good six or seven games on pro difficulty before I was able to get a hang of the rhythm passing attack. Gotta throw the ball quick and not hang onto it for more than a second or two! Once I did that, it was game over for the rest of the league and nothing was going to stop me on my way to a Super Bowl victory.
Graphics:
Looking at this game in present day, you might not be too impressed with its graphics. But you have to remember that back in 1999 or 2000, no one had seen ANYTHING like this before. Completely blown away doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt about this game. It all starts with the game’s presentation. Each football game starts up with a TV-style introduction. The announcer talks about the two teams, their records, the weather, etc while the camera zooms around the field watching everyone stretch and warm up. The player models are lifelike. You can clearly make out decals on the player helmets, and little touches like armbands and that sort of thing. When you zoom in during replays, the players’ faces even look like their real life counterparts. Compare that to all the other football titles I’d played at the time where each player was a pixelated mess of polygons, and you can see why I was so excited by this game. Oh, and you can’t forget the players’ butts. They looked good too.
The stadiums also look good. There are some solid weather effects. The animations at the time were more fluid and lifelike than anything I’d encountered to that point. NFL2K was an absolute game changer when it came to graphics and presentation in football video games.
Sound:
If I had to find any fault with this game’s presentation it would have to be in regards to the sound. The actual sound of the crowd and all the grunts and groans on the football field aren’t bad. I like how little touches are thrown in like the roar of the panther or the blowing of the Viking horn whenever the home team would get a big play. What I didn’t like was the announcer. He sounds like a generic, boring game show host type person. Who is this guy, and has he been in anything else since this game? Couldn’t they have found an actual NFL commentator to call the action? The color commentator isn’t that bad, but I don’t know who the hell he is either. Another generic voice actor? A lot of things they said didn’t make sense either. One comment in particular made me chuckle. Something along the lines of “This is why Brett Favre never shows up in the turnover column. He protects the ball, and his accuracy and decision making are top of the line.” Really. Never shows up in the turnover column, eh?
An actual, competent group of announcers would have made this game a touch more enjoyable.
Overall:
It’s really hard for me to review a 20 year old football game, especially considering that most NFL games these days probably are ten times better and more lifelike than this one. I’m sure that everything this game does has since been perfected by the Madden franchise, so I am going to have to lean on nostalgia a little bit here. Hope you don’t mind.
I think it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of someone like me back in the year 2000. To go from blocky, pixelated, primitive looking football games to an absolute masterpiece like this is like eating at McDonalds one day and going to a five star restaurant the next. I can’t overstate just how incredible this game was to me when it first came out. To top it off, it’s a fun game too. I can lose myself playing it for hours and hours on end. Each game you play and each team you face off against is an experience of its own. You just never know what’s going to happen when you play this game (unless you’re playing on rookie). I could play this game all day long if I had the time, which is impressive considering you’re just doing the same thing over and over again.
The graphics, the controls, the presentation, pretty much everything comes together to create a near-perfect video game experience. Plus, it was a real treat to come back to a game this old and see players like Brett Favre, Dan Marino, Randy Moss, Terrell Davis, Junior Seau, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, Jerome Bettis, and Barry Sanders in the prime of their careers. I could go on and on. It made me want to play with every team just to get the experience of seeing them and playing as them under my belt.
If you enjoyed this game growing up, I’d suggest finding a way to get your hands on it to play it again. It was such an incredible walk down memory lane. If you’ve never played this game before, I don’t know if playing this will have any impact on you as I’m sure this game seems quite primitive compared to the other NFL titles that have come out in the last 20 years.
However you shake it, this game will always be a winner in my books. Always has been, and always will continue to be.
NFL2K, baby. Boom!
Final Score:
A
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