My two week adventure with NFL 2K3

I owned NFL 2K3 for two weeks. My wife bought it as a surprise for me. It was only $30 which really surprised me because most new video games these days are at least $40 and in most cases $50 and $60. Anyway, when I got some free time, I put it in my PS2 to check it out.


Initial Impressions

My first experience with the game was a memorable one. The game looked great and very realistic. I hate to use an old cliché, but it felt as if I was right there in the stadium playing football. The tackles and hits were all very realistic and impressive. Looking back on it, the look of the game was very good despite it being my first football experience on the Playstation 2. The controls were very logical and, knowing a lot about football, I picked up the nuances very easily.


What Does It Have

Before I dive deeper into my opinion of the game, let me go into more depth on what it has. The graphics as I eluded to earlier are very good and very professional. This is a general consensus in the gaming world that the NFL 2K series has a superior look and feel to Madden, Gameday or any other football game on the market. This is true in my impression.

The controls are very precise and realistic. I had no trouble executing special moves, like dive tackles, stiff arms and juke moves. Although it does take more practice to execute these moves effectively than other games. The control layout makes sense and is similar to other football games like Madden.

The menu layout and presentation looks good in part to Sega's ESPN license. While navigating the menus you feel as if you're watching Sports Center.

The game has the options of quick game (play an exhibition right away), season, franchise, situation, practice and online play. These modes are standard in many excellent football titles these days. NFL 2K3 does this really well.

There are historical teams, fantasy drafts for seasons and franchises, and custom playbooks (but not custom plays) ... all of which are well done and the sign of a great game.

The franchise mode allows you to sign, trade and manage your team as well as play a full season of games including preseason, playoffs and the Super Bowl. There is also a salary cap, draft, combine and scouting after the season ends as well. This is all well done and yet another sign of a complete game.

Online play lets you play against other people from around the country. You can also download roster updates as the NFL season progresses too.


It's the Little Things ...

The more I played it, the more frustrated I got with the game. It all has to do with the little things. Sega stuffed a bunch of features into the game to compete with games like Madden, but it's clear that testing took a backseat to get these features in. For instance, the difficulty is unbalanced. I can move the ball up and down the field on the rookie difficulty setting, but good offensive teams can put up big points on my defense. I can increase the difficulty of certain aspects of the offense, while decreasing the difficulty of the defense. The only problem with this is that at one point playing defense becomes too easy because the computer is so handicapped. There's no happy medium. I spent hours of testing to try and get the difficulty right, but I just couldn't do it. The computer player either scored 3 points or 37. There needs to be a way of skillfully playing defense without resorting to handicapping the computer so much that it takes no skill whatsoever.

Another example of shotty testing has to do with the franchise mode. The best franchise mode I've ever seen in a video game was on Front Page Sports Football Pro '96 for the PC. It didn't have a salary cap and it lacked other features, but it was still a good game because it was thoroughly tested from a game play standpoint. One thing I noticed when simulating through several years in the franchise mode is that certain positions, like place kickers just dry up. Some teams can't kick the ball down the field because they don't have a kicker. How fun is that? That alone just ruins the fun of franchise play. What if your team was the one who lost at kicker musical chairs? You'll be left with no way to kickoff the ball effectively and you can't trade for another kicker because teams won't be willing to let theirs go.

There are other things that bothered me, but not as much as these two things. For instance you use your franchise team as your team in online play. Nor to the roster updates work while playing online as well. This would be more major to someone who plays more online, but I don't so it doesn't bother me much. I also would like to export my franchise team to play against a historical team. For instance if my franchise team went undefeated and won the Super Bowl, wouldn't it be fun to play an exhibition against the '72 Dolphins for ultimate supremacy. Or what if you have a great offense, but want to see how it would stack up against the '85 Bears defense or '00 Ravens defense. That would be nice.

It's just little things like these that really put me down on the game.


The Final Straw

There was one event that really ended my relationship with NFL 2K3 and is now the reason why it's now for sale on ebay. I tried downloading the roster update, however I was having a problem with the game freezing once it finished downloading. I went to the message boards on the Internet, however I was insulted and made fun of for not being able to get it working ... that is if I got any response at all. I contacted support at Sega and got a reply that said to the effect of "well, it's just not going to work." That really ended it for me. I am instead switching to Madden NFL 2003 instead. That game has 5 times the people online and will be able to help me more if I run into problems. So far none and I am very happy with that.


Who Would I Recommend This To

I would recommend this game in general. People out there who just want to play a quick game every once in a while will find this game fun. Also, for people up for a good challenge will be very satisfied with this game. It really tests your skill and knowledge of football. Also, if you don't go online, but rather just play self-contained in your own house, you'll have no reason to get anything more. Finally people looking for a cheaper title with a lot of replay value will like this game. In the football video game market there is no game out there with a better content to price ratio than NFL 2K3. However, if you really like certain aspects of football and like more depth, you might want to look elsewhere. I fall into that category and that's why I only owned the game for 2 weeks.