Street Ball
While hardcore sports sims like the Madden titles have long been a staple of video gaming, Xbox gamers have also lucked out in arcade sports games like Midway’s SlugFest series and Outlaw Volleyball. Now, EA SPORTS BIG, creator of the excellent NBA Street series, turns its sights on pro football with NFL Street, a game that takes the greatest legends of the seventies, eighties, and nineties and the top pros in today’s NFL and turns them into superheroes.
From legend to superhero.
Rules Are Made to be Sacked
NFL Street strips the game of football down to the playground basics: seven-man teams playing both offense and defense. (Yup, it’s your chance to see whether the Fridge can throw the rock with any precision. On second thought, forget about it—he can’t). Playing street ball means no goalposts and no kicks, but the players can move the ball down the field with short backward passes, style tricks, and even dribbling. Passing and player control is very similar to NBA Street, and it’s easy to pick up … even for beginners. Gameplay is smooth, fluid, fast, and just plain satisfying-from the bone-crunching collisions to the character models that look like cartoon versions of the pros.
The fields offer different surfaces and obstacles.
Anytime, Anywhere
By stripping NFL Street down to the roots, the developers have been able to build in their own unique takes on the game of football. Gameplay is dramatically affected by the choice of field. The Warehouse, for example, has wooden rafters that can block long passes and force both sides to stick to the running game, while the Beach has a strip of hard-packed sand running down the middle that lets fast players run like the wind. But, it’s also flanked by ocean on one side and dry sand on the other, both of which slow receivers down to a crawl.
Like NBA Street, players can use style moves to build up a Gamebreaker meter. (Hold the left trigger for basic style moves and add twists with different buttons.) When the meter is full, you can execute unstoppable plays on offense or defense. Naturally, you can also use a finite amount of Turbo power by pulling the right trigger when running, passing, tackling, or blocking to get a little extra juice. The game controls are intuitive and never get bogged down too much with details.
Legends Unmasked
EA SPORTS BIG has included an amazing lineup of NFL legends and current pros to round out the rosters, including favorites like the Fridge, Lawrence Taylor, Kenny Stabler, and Larry Czonka. Every player has his own special skills and unique style, and some of the legends can do things that border on X-Men territory. The beauty of NFL Street is that is lets you mix and match all of these guys as you see fit. Put them at the positions you’ve always wanted to see them play, and turn each and every game into a one-of-a-kind experience. The legends even have their own field: a huge, sprawling gridiron flanked by massive bronze statues of the top players in history.
Each game is a one-of-a-kind experience.
The primary single-player game, NFL Challenge, is a semi-story mode that lets you create your own team and work your way through a tournament ladder, taking on the rest of the NFL until you reach the championship or beat certain scenarios such as “score on the first down against the Seahawks.” Doing well in single-player mode unlocks new equipment and other goodies for your football stars.
Multiplayer is totally flexible, letting both players join the same team (one takes quarterback, while the other takes the rest) or go head-to-head in a quick match between NFL teams. But, the best multiplayer experience in NFL Street—heck, in most any sports game to hit the Xbox this year—is the simple Pickup game, where the best players in the league line up like kids on a playground as you and your opponent take turns choosing your seven-man lineups.
NFL Street is the NFL the way you always wanted to see it. It may not be real, but it’s real freakin’ cool!
By Ben Barker
