Gaming Target - Dreamcast: NFL 2K1

Written by Arthur Hughes on August 28, 2001

Review: You see, there's no Title Comment here, cause Art is very un-funny

With the release of the highly anticipated NFL2K2 by Visual Concepts coming soon, we've decided to give you a retro review of NFL2K1, which for some reason or another was never reviewed. You may have noticed that I'm a massive football fan, hence why I review football games like some big bad meanie General in the Army. After NFL2K, I anticipated NFL2K1 to be a great videogame without the flaws of the past year's game, namely the running game. So, read on to see what this football fanatic thinks about last years sequel to one of the best football games ever made.

The first thing I'll mention is that the gameplay this year is definitely better than last year's, with a greatly improved AI being the star of the show. Thankfully, the running game has been greatly improved too. All of the basic moves are back, and if executed properly they can lead to some killer plays. In saying that, your favorite plays are here too, such as the Hail Mary and Flea Flicker. You get to play as all of your favorite teams and players from last year as well. Every player/team in the game is noticeably different from one another, and so lifelike that they remind you of their human counterparts. But the best part of this game, and most hyped, has got to be the online play. If you're like me, after a few weeks with a sports game the computer just doesn't put up much of a challenge anymore, and to make it worse, you don't have any brothers to play against, so you're forced to leave your house to find an opponent. But, now you can play your friend down the street or somebody you've never met in a whole nother state without a hit in gameplay.

Graphically, the game is pretty much the same as last year's version, aside from a few noticeable differences. All of the players move fluently and are nicely modeled; in addition, the characters moves run nicely together. Plus, the hard-hitting tackles look realistic and are always exciting and different. In my opinion, the area of graphics that is truly amazing though, has to be during online play. The graphics stay true to the single player mode, even while your playing over a 56k modem against other opponents, which shows the true power of the good ole' DC.

The sound is great too. The crowd actually seems to have intelligence, they roar with excitement only win the home team makes good plays, first downs, or scores. The play-by-play commentary this year seems to be lacking compared to other titles this year, but the sounds during the plays is realistic. Once again, during online play the sound is still great, not missing a single beat during the plays.

NFL2K1 doesn't contain any special features that aren't incorporated into every other football game except for online play. But I am going to list them for you anyways, just for all you football novices out there. First there's exhibition, basically this is the mode you'll play with a friend, or if you just want to play a single game versus the computer. Next is practice, just like the name says you get to practice your plays to improve your skills. Then you have the Season and Franchise modes, their both practically the same, but in Franchise mode you will play several seasons as the General Manager of a team, this mode easily contains the most replay throughout the game. Finally, there's create a player/team/play. For some people this is the best part of the game, but others could probably care less about it. For the most part though, it's just fun to mess with.

To conclude, we come to replay. In my opinion sports games have the best replay out of any game genre around. With the amount of options, teams, and plays in this generation of football games, it's amazing we don't spend years playing the same one. However, I would have to say the only flaw in the replay of sports games is the fact that nobody really wants to play them after the season is over.