Nfl Fever: Gang Tackling
 

Ok my little brother fired up fever 04 yesterday and to my suprise i saw a gang tackle. I mean i was quite amazed. I dont have the proof but boy did i watch the replay at least 10xs.

It was scripted but i was still amazed it looked quite good. This is how it went down. My brother was using his created team, his player was running down the side line. One defender was tackling him by grabbing his back while the other player also came into the hit by putting his hand on his fellow team mate and the other on the runner and they both took him down.

I remember seeing a different type of "gang tackling" in the game though. It was actually more of a two man hit than a gang tackle. A defender would push the runner back and another defender would wrap him up from behind and take him down, its not a gang tackle per-say but really a two man tackle, which i found impressive.

I heard the that fever used a series of animations similar to the new madden game coming out. The animations didn't branch off, but they rolled well. Not sure how to explain it. Its like the animations had great transitions. If the runner broke one dude, it would still be easy to take him down, the transition animation wasn't as stiff as in the previous the madden games.

I'm quite a bit P.Oed at the fact that the series ended to abruptly. I mean they were turning themselves from a arcade game to a more simulation game. They removed the excessive turbo and added a sprint and just tryed to tone down the arcade elements. Read N Lead is still one of the best passing mechanics i've ever seen in a football videogame. It was realistic. I mean it had it flaws because some times the recievers would slow down or speed up too much but after that, a bit tweaked, definitly the best passing mechanic.

Plus its the first game to have and still have running back hot routes. Not sure how realistic that is in real life, but you could hot route the fullback to block at a certain hole and you could also hot route the running back to running run a certain hole which was great.

To counter madden, they had defensive schemes that were "stop run to the left, stop run to the right, stop middle run." "Stop passes to the life, right, and middle." I mean it wasn't perfect but it was actually quite usefull.

Great commentary and a good presentation. Nothing like 2k5 but it was good. Great replay recap at the end of the game. Plus at the end you would see who was affected by the game. Every game some players would either increase in ratings or decrease, you could even see the opposite teams stats as well.

Sadly when i got live, the next series of football games came out and no one was on fever anymore, so i'm not sure how the online playe out. But i think the game had online leagues with XSN Sports.

I know i'm just bringing back old memories, but i miss fever. And sometimes i think if they had made a 2005 or 2006 how would the game be? They had good graphics and a lot of potential. They did a lot of good stuff that some of the football games coming out this year aren't even doing yet.