ESPN Football 2K4

ESPN Football 2K4
Game: ESPN Football 2K4
Platform: Playstation 2
Studio: Sega
Rating: 9.5/10

Game Company’s Description: You feel that deep breath you take when you’re staring down 80 yards of real estate, a six-point deficit and 1:31 on the clock. You feel the fear in the air that results from unblinkingly staring down a quarterback from your middle linebacker position. You feel that brief moment in time when the ball’s in the air and all that fills your mind is the overwhelming need to drive your helmet through that receiver’s rib cage. ESPN NFL Football brings the complete NFL experience. Whether it’s by making an opponent lose his shorts from a stop-and-go juke, by scraping your toes down as you make an acrobatic first-down catch along the sideline, or by piling on top of a swarming gang tackle on fourth and short–you will truly feel everything that makes the National Football League so intense. Don’t look. Don’t listen. Feel.

Look: Dazzled. That is how I felt from the opening scenes of the new ESPN Football. The inside look of Sportscenter is dead on. The Crib is cool, if you need something extra to keep you enticed. Instead of dancing around it I want to get right to the game, which is where everything really matters.

The players for the most part look great. Some faces can look flat with their helmets on but when they score and we see them on the sideline they have a better 3D map of their features. I played the Buffalo Bills quite a bit; hey I grew up there! Travis Henry scored and on the sideline he mouthed “hi mom” you could see he had the Amish beard and all. Amazing. Drew Bledsoe had this sort of flat face in his helmet, but it’s not entirely bad. The worst face are the referees. He looks like the gangster in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. The cheerleaders were sexy with their bouncing breasts included for good measure. The best parts were the field. Wow. It looks like a real picture of the turf with team logos. The Dolphins field was amazing. You see the logo in the middle of the field and you swear you are looking at the real thing. Bravo! Then there are the fans who bump chests and scream their heads off. Nice touch adding the face pant and construction hats of with the team colors. Everything is excess. It’s like adding those extra toppings on your pizza. It only adds to the flavor.

The game still has a few flaws that are downright nitpicky. There are some issues with jumpy animations and collision detection. Players head back to the huddle and bounce off each other, but often in an awkward manner. However the absolute fluid movement tops that. Travis Henry takes an opening down the right side of the sidelines 30 yards for a touchdown. When you see the replay you swear on your life that its from an ESPN highlight reel.

There is first person. You get to play as if you were the player on the field. It’s fantastic. There are more problems here with frame rates and a higher potential for quality loss, but it’s worth it.

Feel: I have yet to play a game this tight. As I said there are some collision issues but issues from the past like hitting a lineman as you ran and getting stuck behind him is a thing of the past. Now you bounce off him realistically and get another chance to pound your way forward. When you get tackled you don’t just fall. Sometimes you are carried for a two or three yard gain. Who ever saw Ricky Williams tackled and he falls straight down. He almost always falls for a two or more yard game from sheer momentum. Finally Sega got this right and I couldn’t have been happier.

Everything has been given a tune up. The kicking is now stable. The passing has been tweaked. As I said, the running has had the best upgrade. The collision detection is finally right. No more stuck against someone’s back or caught up in their feet. Playing offense feels right. Playing defense still isn’t an easy chore and it shouldn’t be. You have to fight to stop opposing offenses. Because of the ability of the running back to have true running ability you must take out their legs if you hope to stop them or slow them down. Get used to it, this is football. This year the computers AI is much improved. Don’t expect Cincinnati to be lay down.

The playbook at first seems awkward but it only takes a drive or two to really get used to it and learn how much better it is than last years. It’s much more intuitive and you have a coach’s selection when you hit L1. The audible calls are the biggest upgrade because you can select a real play rather than a standard three plays.

Franchise mode is very similar to last year except for the addition of email (updates from the team doctor on injuries, and congrats from your owner), team sheets on next week’s opponents, power ratings, and more. You wonder how you did without them.

Hear: Sega has the best commentators. Madden has the name, but also with that comes the monotony. There is some monotony but at the same time they mix it up very well and you rarely hear the same things said in the same game. You feel like you are watching these guys talking about a Sunday night ESPN game. It’s primetime all the time, especially with Chris Berman’s halftime updates and highlights. In first person mode you get to hear some smack. Very well done.

Frankly: Hands down the best football game made yet. We say it every year about Sega’s release and it’s astonishing with each year Sega out do themselves. We said years ago that Sega has taken the Madden crowd; they’ve proved it once again.

+ Rick Carey


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