NFL Street Review

Well it’s here… the much talked about and greatly advertised football game, NFL Street. EA Sports, the makers of highly-successful games like Madden Football, decided to develop second football game, only with a major difference. NFL Street amazingly does for football what NBA Street did for basketball, tossing many of the game's real-life rules out the window in order to deliver a faster, more arcade-like game of football. The first rule the game changes is the number of players. NFL Street is a seven-on-seven game, and all punts, extra points, and field goals have been removed. The game has no penalties, and features a lot of tricky over-the-top moves, passes, jukes, and more!

The introduction video that plays before the menu screen, lets you know exactly what the game is going to be like… exciting and exactly like its name, STREET. Once you reach the menu screen you suddenly feel as if you popped in a game from a few years ago as the menu screen looks as if the designer was drunk while he made the graphics for it. After I got over the menu, I went straight where I always go in these types of games (the story mode, of course), which they call NFL Challenge. (Side Note: A great option that the NFL Challenge section of NFL Street includes is that of a 2-player mode. Most story modes of sports games especially do not have this option, which only adds to this already great game.)

I started playing the development points scenarios and after a little time, I started thinking to myself, “why hasn’t anything popped up to edit the team?” or “can I even edit the team at all?” Once I got some development points, I figured I would now try to fix up my team if I could only find out where that option was. Well it was right there in front of me at the bottom right-hand corner of the NFL Challenge screens 'press O for team edit', making it incredibly easy, so I proceeded by doing so. Making it even more interactive, I realized that I could edit the team names and ALL players, which includes over 350 of the NFL's biggest stars from all 32 teams, not to mention, legends like William "The Refrigerator" Perry and Lawrence Taylor. Although I feel this option should have really been available when I made a new profile for NFL Challenge, I started editing & creating my own personal team. After I customized some tattoos, bandanas, clothes (including shoes and socks) my team, 'E-Town Killahz', with their star QB ‘Dave the Destroyer’, got ready to get back to the actual game-play.

The game-play is much more difficult than you would expect from a fast paced, seven-on-seven football game. I was expecting something similar to Blitz but it was nothing at all like it. Especially when you do the NFL Challenge, you are playing against awesome teams and you consist of your basic team with hardly any offense or defense. I found running is the easiest offensive move to start out with since your starting RB has pretty good stats. You will easily learn maneuvers like how to stiff-arm and spin in order to pass your defenders and eventually earn game-breaker points. Game-breaker points are very important as they make your move faster, hit harder and score easier. When your playing offense, you complete almost all your passes (at least more then most other football games) and can stiff-arm so much harder than normal, make it more fun to play than its predecessors. While playing defense every time you power hit an offensive player, they usually will fumble, so game-breakers are great to use especially right after they receive the ball while they are close to their end zones. I have caused and recovered many fumbles leading to touchdowns using game-breakers.

A great and unique addition to NFL Street is the fields you play on. Eight urban locations are more than just a place to play; they change how the game is played. Each field has unique dimensions and field surfaces like loose sand, dirt, mud, and turf can force a change in your lineup and game plan. Overall the game-play is pretty good and will take some time for you to get used to if you are a big Madden player/fan, especially the defense, as in my opinion, its one of the toughest football defenses to play.

Now, you can’t complain about the music line up included with this game. NFL Street features original and new music from a lot of artists such as the X-ecutioners featuring B-Real (of Cypress Hill), Fuel, Lostprophets, DJ KaySlay / Three 6 Mafia, Nas, Graph, Lil Flip, Killer Mike and more! The ONLY draw back with games that have soundtracks now a days is they really need to have a lot more songs since after a weekend of playing, you start to get annoyed by hearing the same songs over and over.

Overall this game will bring you fun and excitement for along time whether you only play once in a while, or your like me and try to build up your team in the story mode. NFL STREET has a big learning curve, unlike NBA Street, but don’t give up you will learn how to stop that run soon enough!