NFL Quarterback Club 2002

However on PlayStation 2, Acclaim Sports is giving it yet one more shot, with NFL QB Club 2002. Surprisingly, the game is not as poor as the aforementioned Dreamcast disasters; in fact it's quite solid and at times fun. But, with Madden 2002 sitting on shelves, and NFL 2K2 coming soon, I find it quite hard to recommend QB Club over either one of them. They're both simply better, deeper, more solid football games.

QB Club's weaknesses begin at the menu screens Ц a lack of a Franchise mode, killing a chunk of replay value. In this day and age a football game MUST include this mode to be taken seriously, unless the gameplay completely blows away the competition. In its defense, however, QB Club has the signature Quarterback Challenge mode that is actually quite fun. You pick out a bunch of QB's, and compete in a series of non-contact drills, like longest throws and target accuracy. It's a great multiplayer diversion that can still be fun for the single player. Besides that, there is nothing, in terms of options, that Madden or NFL 2K2 can't do better. To be blunt: NFL QB Club is bland, nothing more or less.

The blandest thing is without a doubt the gameplay Ц while it's nothing that I would consider terrible or pitiful, it's just rather boring and sluggish. The players run around the field slow and the jittery frame-rate makes it even worse. Many times on offense I would be running the football and trying to make a cut, only for the controller to not respond properly, leading to a loss of yards or a fumble. Or other times I would guide a pass to a receiver, only for the wideout to come up way short because he got stuck in coverage, due to bad physics. It just comes off extremely sloppy at times. On defense, I've missed perfectly good tackles due to bad collision detection, or just because the controls aren't fine-tuned enough compared to the way they should be. Most of the time it's not so bad that the game is unplayable, but there are many cases the game causes things to go awry, when they shouldn't.

The AI is decent, but at times extremely cheap as well. Even on Rookie the CPU can slice up the best secondaries with ease, with the same pass patterns over and over. And because the controls are so sluggish at times, you're unable to really get a handle on the receivers, and wind up just hoping to get there to knock it away. And when they run the ball, the backs seem to shake off every diving tackle, and the offensive linemen are invincible against even the top defensive linemen. Occasionally you can break through, but most of the time the computer cheats to get the yards. Then again, offense isn't much better. If you have a strong enough running back, you can just run the same up the gut play over and over and never have a problem. Passing the ball is a bit more difficult, but running the same play again and again can give you huge yards. It does make for a challenging game of football, just not a fair one. There is a huge playbook to choose from thankfully, giving you many options to find a series of plays that consistently works.

Visually, QB Club is again, decent, but nothing to write home about. The presentation is top-notch and TV-style, with nice stat layers and excellent stat tracking. Checking out the standings, schedule, and league leaders is a simple process and laid out extremely nice. There is no doubt Acclaim spent a lot of time creating this presentation, and I personally think it's the strongest part of the graphics. Which of course means..

..The in game graphics leave a lot to be desired. For one, the frame-rate is as I said before, extremely sluggish and full of slowdown. The 60 FPS engine slows and stutters when the action picks up, which is highly frustrating and leads to the aforementioned control problems. The stadiums are rendered nicely and look quite real, but the player animations are rather poor and they look very weird. There's nothing really wrong with it, just nothing that great. Again, bland is the word of the day. Compared to Madden, or the early screenshots of NFL 2K2, Quarterback Club is outpaced by a landslide.

As for the sound, it's not bad. Kevin Harlan covers the play by play, and color commentary is done by former NFL star Bill Maas. Both do a good job, but also do stupid things as well. Sometimes they say the complete wrong thing, looking extremely dumb. Many times there will be a fumble recovered by the defense, but they say the offense is lucky to recover the ball back. Goofy. Most of the time though they are pretty accurate and not too repetitive. As a toss in, a few NFL referees lent their voices into the game for calling penalties and doing the coin toss Ц a nice touch.

The on-the-field sounds are your usual; typical crowd noises, quarterbacks calling out signals, and crunching bodies. Nothing special at all that sticks out.