NFL Quarterback Club 2002

The QB Club franchise has undergone some serious tweaks and fixes after losing some of its momentum with its less than stellar appearances on the Nintendo 64. A new graphics and AI engine was built for the PS2 version, and the game looks and plays better than last year's NFL GameDay 2001 PS2 offering from Sony.

However, just like aging Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who was battling nagging injuries the last couple of seasons and is now healthy, this game needed to regain a step or two if it was going to compete with the likes of Madden.

At its core, NFL QB Club 2002 is a solid, addictive and fun football title that will come as a blindside tackle for many football gaming fans, even those who swear by EA Sports' Madden NFL or Sony's NFL GameDay titles; which, I would like to point out were not free of flaws in their first year of release on the PlayStation 2. NFL QB Club 2002 shares some of those same flaws, but it also offers up some new and refreshing gameplay alternatives and ways of looking at the NFL game.

It's not Madden NFL 2002, and it doesn't try to be. Consider Tecmo Super Bowl, which was the marquis brand and the most popular title for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Tradewest's John Elway Football was the second choice, and many gamers owned both games because they were big time NFL fans.

Acclaim's QB Club 2002 shows traces of Tecmo Super Bowl and unfortunately traces of John Elway Football with its loose camera angles and AI flaws. At least Acclaim has spelled all of the team names properly! Gamers may remember that in the NES version of Elway, Tradewest spelled San Francisco wrong!

The reason I am taking you on a trip down memory lane is to point out that although many gamers believe Madden NFL is the be-all and end-all of football games, there have always been viable alternatives. Just because you like one type of soap, toothpaste or game, doesn't mean the others are bad or inferior.

While NFL Quarterback Club 2002 might not be as polished or have the better AI and all the bells and whistles of Madden, it is a very solid football game and offers up plenty of new and innovative features that Madden doesn't. I enjoyed being able to pick a play and seeing the cursors showcase the coverage on defense and seeing the routes of the running backs and receivers without having to call them up before the play.

My favorite innovation in this game is a meter at the top of the screen that appears when picking defensive plays. A bar shows you whether or not the formation you've picked is better to stop the run or the pass. This will go a long way to helping novice players find their way, and have a better chance of competing and winning quickly.

Another new feature is the precision defensive play calling, which allows football gaming fans to create more than 300 different play combinations.

Acclaim also decided to put the Quarterback Club Challenge back into this year's game. The QB Club Challenge is a contest that takes place after the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. The top quarterbacks in the league take part in a number of QB specific mini-games. The competition is a good thing and it is very addictive. It will take you about 15 to 30 minutes (depending on your football knowledge and gaming skill) to figure out how to score and be competitive in the four different tasks.

There are over 65 quarterbacks past (John Elway, Dan Marino, Steve Young, Jim Kelly and Phil Simms) and present that you can choose to take part in the competition. The Speed and Mobility challenge is like an obstacle course for quarterbacks. It isn't too difficult, but you will have to go under a bar by pressing the X-button on your PS2 controller, and jump over a small bar before you toss the ball and hit the target. Again press the X-button to do this, but you will also have to avoid knocking down the two pylons on the course which would add extra time to the challenge and translate into fewer points. After you hop the last bar, you use the analog stick to position the cursor that appears over the target and then press the X-button, hopefully hitting the bull's-eye!

In the Accuracy, Long Distance Throw, and Read and Recognition events, leading the targets is the way to go. But again, practice will make perfect and the way Acclaim has implemented the competition is good. It's frustrating until you figure out how to put up the points and which strategy to use (as in which targets to hit), but all of these things are part of gaming and are not flaws in the design.

The look of the game is fresh; the pop-up boxes that showcase a player's stats after a play on offense or defense are a nice touch and add to the television style presentation.

I occasionally threw out the penalty flag for the frame rate, which suffers from the same problem that Madden NFL 2001 for the PS2 did last year; when there are a lot of players in one area sometimes there is a wee bit of slowdown.

NFL Quarterback Club 2002's artificial intelligence isn't perfect either; you can throw into double or triple coverage the majority of the time and have the ball caught for a first down. I wouldn't suggest trying that in the end zone, as the defense tightens up and the defenders have less terrain to cover.

My biggest complaint about this game lies in the tackling. Tackles look and feel more like shoulder hits in a wrestling match than they do big-time NFL tackles. Proper tackles do occur, but when they happen the defender will toss the player he is tackling ahead as opposed to trying to stop his momentum, even in short yardage. Sometimes this will help your opponent get first down yardage, which is frustrating. However, the AI is good enough to make this game worthy of spending the $50 USD or $80 Canadian to pick it up.

Putting the game into perspective, QB Club 2002 plays better than last year's version of GameDay and the original version of NFL 2K and Madden for the PlayStation 2. But it doesn't look anywhere near as good as Madden NFL 2002 and it doesn't have as many frills. It is a solid game that will surely be a starting point and a building block for Acclaim Studios' QB Club team. Working from here, next year's game should be more polished.

If Madden NFL 2002 is like eating a Big Mac and NFL GameDay is like eating a Whopper, then Quarterback Club 2002 is like a Carl's Jr. Marquis burger or going to White Castle for a six pack of burgers. My point is that your tastes will determine whether or not this game will suit your palate.

I am here to tell you that the folks who trash this game because it isn't Madden haven't given it a try. At the end of the day I am happy to say that the NFL Quarterback Club franchise is back and it is once again worthy to call itself an NFL game.

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