NFL Tour

6.0
Average

Gameplay	8.5	"Gone is Street, in comes Tour."
Graphics	7.0
Sound	5.0
Value	5.0

By Daniel Needham

NFL Street and its sibling street sports titles were a staple of the last generation, and they were a blast to play, providing an easy control scheme allowing a pick up and play feel to make a great arcade sports game. Now that we have jumped into the next generation, gone is the former NFL Street, as it is now known as NFL Tour.

While at first it seems like only the title has changed, upon further investigation you’ll find a lot more has changed, and unfortunately it isn’t for the greater good. For starters, NFL Tour is light on game modes, as you can play an exhibition game, online game, two mini-games, or tour mode.

The two mini-games are Smash and Dash and Redzone Rush. Smash and Dash is essentially a game of keep-away in a small arena, and Redzone Rush has players taking turns going one-on-one in an effort to score from the 20-yard line. Both games are simple and fun, but there's very little reason to revisit them once you've played them a few times as they do become quite simple to master. Online play is limited to ranked and unranked play, and while it is easy enough to find a game it’s nothing overly special.

The only mode with any kind of depth is Tour mode. Here, you pick a team, create a player, and then take on all the other NFL teams in ladder-style tournament. Your goal is always to win, but there's often more to it than just being ahead when the time expires. Sometimes you'll have to hit a certain score to win, but other times, you’ll start with a handicap and have to fight your way back to victory. It's a great format for an arcade game, and with the various rule changes from city to city you’ll find yourself scrambling to win in some places.

What really holds this title up despite its mode shortfalls is the gameplay. It’s not ground-breaking or anything but it’s a real blast to play, and can help disguise the fact that the game doesn’t hold all that much value outside Tour mode. The play on the field is fast, and the controls are easy to learn. There's a button for turbo, one for juking, and one to power through tackles. You can avoid tackles or make them with well-timed presses of a button. The only button mashing you'll need to do is to hit a button to break certain tackles or overpower a blocker. All this combines to provide a great arcade-style football game, with plenty of points being scored, and big hits to boot.

Visually, player models look great, and the stadiums, which basically consist of a field with walls around it and some seating, also look good, but apart from the various background city icons, you’d have a hard time telling them apart. The audio side of the ball is a very mixed bag. Effects and other on-field sounds are great, but the commentary is just downright appalling. In an age where sports games strive to not have repetitive content, NFL Tour has a blatant disregard for it. It even pokes fun at itself in the process. Whatever the developers were trying for here definitely didn’t come off.

As a package NFL Tour doesn’t quite cut the mustard. The tour mode is all well and good but there just isn’t enough content behind that to support a game, despite its cheaper retail price, and its enjoyable gameplay.

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