NFL Fever 2002 (2001)

 

Game: NFL Fever 2002 released for the Original Xbox on November 15th, 2001. Developed and Published by Microsoft. Game box includes game disc and 30 page b&w instruction manual with full color front and back as well as 16 page full color Microsoft Games brochure.

Introduction: Back in 1999 Microsoft decided to try their hand at an NFL football game and released NFL Fever 2000 for Windows. When Microsoft decided to enter the console market in 2001 they figured that a new game for their American Football series would be a perfect fit on the console. Interestingly, out of the 20 launch games for the console, NFL Fever was the only title developed by Microsoft themselves.

Story: For this game the story comes in the form of Dynasty mode. You will manage your football team across up to 25 seasons while controlling everything from which players you want to trade to which play to call to whether you want the player to turn right or left.

Visuals: NFL Fever 2002 is presented at 480P with a 4:3 aspect ratio. This game was pretty much the best looking sports game you could find in 2001. The player models, the stadiums, the crowds and the weather all reached a level of realism in this game which was years ahead of any of the other sports games at the time. This game did a lot for showcasing the power of Microsoft's new system.

 

Sound: The sound in this game is all about simulating what watching a real NFL game on TV is like. The announcers have stuff to say for many scenarios that can occur and each time gets its own home field sounds such as the teams theme song getting played when they score a touchdown. The music is also pretty fun. while mostly being used for the menus, hearing the NFL films songs and N.E.R.D. gets me really pumped. I love knowing they made a special remix of their song "Rock Star" specifically to be used in this game.

 

Gameplay: Nfl Fever features much of the typical stuff you would expect to find in an NFL game. You can play a single game between yourself and the ai or up to two human players per team. There is also a training mode for getting a handle on game mechanics, a season simulatior mode and a full 25 year long dynasty mode. If you have ever played a Madden game you can pretty much know what to expect here. 

 I felt that while many of the game's stats and trades mechanics were very in depth the moment to moment gameplay did feel janky at times and the collision detection between players seems a bit shakey.

Controls: Adding to what was said above, the controls seemed to suffer from a bit of jankiness. The switch player button seemed to not go where I wanted it to a lot of the time and I found it frustrating how the ball carrier will autorun. If you want to change directions he will stop then move in the chosen direction rather than seamlessly moving to manual controls. 

Personal Memories: I remember seeing footage of this game in a lot of xbox demo disc trailers. I remember being totally blown away by how realistic the graphics looked at the time. The realistic weather made it seem like there would be some absolutely epic games. It would be a few years after this before other football games looked this good

 

Versions and Other Releases: NFL Fever 2002 was only released in the normal Greenbox variant. A Sequel was released in 2002 called NFL Fever 2003. 

Conclusion: While this game is an interesting history piece for Microsoft and Xbox, Today there are better playing NFL football games I would sooner recommend including later entries in the NFL Fever series.