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Rating: Average NFL GameDay 2000 is a lot better than NFL GameDay '99, but that's not saying much. My first impression of the game was not good, as there were four interceptions in the first quarter of the first game I played. The frequency of interceptions went down after that, but they still took place much more often than they do in real life. One of the biggest reasons for the annoyingly frequent interceptions is the stupidity of your wide receivers. In any normal football game with decent Artificial Intelligence, you press the button to make the pass as the computer-controlled receiver runs towards the target, and then you quickly switch control to the receiver and try to make the catch. In GameDay 2000, it is very common for the receiver to stop dead in his tracks when you press the button to make the pass, and sometimes they actually run in the opposite direction of where the ball is headed. Thus, by the time you're able to switch control to the receiver, the ball is often un- catchable, and there's nothing to stop the opposing team's secondary from making an easy interception. Another example of the game's lack of common sense comes in the crunch- time AI. When the clock is winding down and the game is on the line, the computer is even more stupid than usual. For example, it usually uses up all its time-outs with over a minute to go in the game, leaving it with no time-outs to finish the drive for a touchdown or stop the clock to attempt a game-winning field goal. It's nice to be able to shake off tackles on offense, but it's a different story when you're the one who's on defense. It's the norm rather than the exception that what should be an easy tackle is not an easy tackle if the person on offense can mash the buttons faster than you can. In addition, the players have energy bars that dwindle away as they become fatigued, but it has almost no effect on the gameplay. As a result, there's nothing to stop you from passing the ball (or running the ball) almost every single play for the whole game. The penalties are also out of whack. They're not called as often as they should be, and whether a penalty is called or ignored seems to be determined randomly. For example, you're much less likely to get called for a penalty if you're blatantly committing pass interference than if you try to sack a quarterback and he gets the ball off just before you hit him (resulting in an unwarranted call of roughing the quarterback). The game's many celebrations are both inappropriate and unrealistic. It's not appropriate that you're given the option to celebrate after just about any play (even when you miss a field goal), and it's not realistic a 300-pound lineman would be break-dancing or spinning around on the ground like a moron. Many of the celebrations in the game are a joke because nobody would ever do them in a real NFL game. GameDay 2000's General Manager Mode is one of the most shameless rip- offs I have ever seen. It's just like the Franchise Mode in last year's Madden, only nowhere near as involving or in-depth. First of all, each GM Mode save takes up an entire memory card (just in case there are any confused retailers reading, that's 15 blocks). Also, each time you want to save your game, you better be ready for a good, solid minute of sitting there waiting for it to save. Re-signing players to new contracts is about as un-involving as it gets. Basically, the player says, "I want X amount of money over X amount of years," and you either say "yes" and sign them to their terms, or say "no" and release them. There are no actual negotiations in the so-called "player negotiations." Also, the developers of the game at Red Zone Interactive must have run out of ideas for the names of incoming rookies, as lots of players have the same last names, and many even have the same full names. For example, in my first NFL Draft, there were six players with the last name Irwin, and three of them were named Steve. I wonder if any of them are Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter... The list of the GM Mode's flaws goes on and on. There is no time-based free agent signing period; instead, you get your choice of every free agent in the league before any other team does (now that's realistic). When you get "fired" in the GM Mode, you are usually re-signed to another team immediately. In the real life, when's the last time you saw a general manager get fired in the middle of the season and then hired by another team the very next week? The game lets you play one pre-season game to determine which players make the team. It sounds nice until you realize that the computer decides who makes the team, not you. Also, the only players who ever get cut from the team after a pre-season game are rookies, which is very realistic because God knows veterans never have to fight for their jobs in the real NFL... The graphics are actually worse than GameDay '99's graphics due to the mis-shapen players and the more zoomed-out view that doesn't allow you to see as much detail in the players. Sound-wise, the classic GameDay menu music has once again been butchered. Red Zone decided to take the least appealing section of the original GameDay tune and play it over and over in GameDay 2000's menu music. The commentary is both repetitive and robotic. There are times when the commentary seems only slightly less robotic than the original NFL Sports Talk for the Sega Genesis. For example, on more than one occasion, Dick Enberg said (after the ball had been on the ground for several seconds), "The ball is picked off! No! Incomplete!" Whenever Tim Biakabutuka runs the ball, there's a good chance that Phil Simms' entire commentary on the play will be, "Biakabutuka! Biakabutuka!" (maybe he just likes saying "Biakabutuka"). There was no 4-3 offense in my team's playbook, so I went with the 3-4 formation instead. Despite the fact that I used the 3-4 formation on every single defensive play in the game, Dick Enberg constantly repeated throughout the game, "They're going with a three-man front!" as if it was a new development. Despite all of its crippling flaws, there are times when NFL GameDay 2000 shows the flashes of brilliance than were commonplace in GameDay '96, '97, and '98. However, it's still only slightly better than GameDay '99 overall, and it's nowhere near as good as Madden. Send your thoughts on this review to ivan@mastergamer.com
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com