Football with a Twist

The NFL Street series introduced the gaming public to a quicker, harder-hitting, more outrageous, and quick-to-understand approach to NFL football. That intuitive foundation and bombastic approach has now evolved into NFL Tour, EA's latest answer to NFL football with an arcade twist.

Celebrate Tour style.

Where Madden NFL 08 requires a deeper understanding of the NFL game and a willingness to embrace detailed strategy and realistic controls, NFL Tour shakes off the complications required of a football simulation and instead focuses on lightning fast gameplay, thunderous hits, over-the-top arenas, and pyrotechnics to meld with game mechanics that can be learned in seconds, not hours.

NFL Tour isn't above fiddling with the rules to produce some eyebrow-raising alternative play.

Join the Tour

Hosted by ESPN's wise-cracking football analyst Trey Wingo, Tour Mode allows you to recreate yourself in the NFL image and join your favorite roster. Once primed and ready to take on all comers, it's off to spectacular, fireworks-laden arenas across the country where you'll do battle with the NFL's elite in seven-on-seven matches.

On the gridiron, only a few buttons are required to pass, sprint, juke, wall run, and bowl over the competition on the way to the end zone. For example, all passes are delivered with the A button, and if you want to cycle through your receivers, tap B until your desired receiver is highlighted. Once you're beyond the line of scrimmage, the B button switches gears to handle all the open-field jukes, including the always popular wall run.

Perhaps the most welcome NFL Tour mechanic is the mid-collision counter moves on both offense and defense. Any time you engage an opponent, you have a chance to thwart their effort. This means shrugging off a tackle as the ball carrier, or holding your ground as a defender. Either counter requires quick button timing at the point of contact. It's at this moment that many NFL Tour matches are won and lost, as first downs or a change of possession comes down to a made or broken tackle.

You can't catch Fast Willie. Come on now.

You'll find also that the playbooks have seen a healthy bit of trimming to fit with the arcade theme. Now even just a quick glance will give you all the info you need pre-snap about the upcoming play. NFL Tour rewards quick, decisive action, not slow, thoughtful tactics.

Rule Sets

The standard seven-on-seven matches flow much the same as a normal NFL game, albeit with tackles that send running backs sprawling ten yards through the air. First downs, touchdowns, turnovers, change of possession after a score, it's all rooted in football tradition. But NFL Tour isn't above fiddling with the rules to produce some eyebrow-raising alternative play.

• Make it, take it: This basketball-inspired rule change allows the team that scores to keep the ball and continue to build on the momentum they've already ripped from the other team. Want to make a comeback? Better get your hands on a pick or force a fumble with a big hit.
• Big D: Each team starts with ten points, first downs require thirty yards not ten, and defensive plays like tackles, sacks, and interceptions score points. It's all about the D, and all the offense can hope for is a touchdown to take a few of the opponent's defensive points off the board.
• Defensive battle: Again, the focus is on the defense, but here each team starts with thirty points and the goal is to reduce your own score to zero with interceptions, sacks and the like.

Sack in 3, 2, 1 …

Mini-Game Offshoots

Changing the rules is one thing, but crafting entirely new game modes is something else entirely. NFL Tour demonstrates its willingness to think outside the arena with a couple of mini-games that break the pigskin mold and change the pace.

• Smash and Dash: This matchup pits you and your opponents in a circular arena with a lone football and the burning desire to hold onto it for as long as possible. The more you carry the ball without being smeared across the turf, the more points you rack up on the board. Highlighted areas of the field offer bonus points if you can somehow manage to reach them without getting splattered against the wall.
• Redzone Rush: This one-on-one or two-on-two battle requires equal parts offensive skill and defensive brawn. Players take turns trying to either outwit their opponents by rushing from the twenty yard line for a score, or plaster them before they reach the end zone during their turn.

NFL Tour for Xbox 360® shakes up the football genre with a more outrageous and casual affair that celebrates a lighter look at America's most popular sport. That you can take NFL Tour's arcade approach online with Xbox LIVE® and do so for a budget price of $39.99, is just an added bonus to an already accessible and fun-filled game.

Article by Ryan Treit