How about some review of NFL Street?

NFL Street
Publisher: EA Sports Big
Developer: EA Sports Big
Players: 1-2
Memory Card Usage: 58 KB
Genre: Extreme Sports
Also available for: Gamecube, X-Box

This was a very anticipated title. The concept: NFL Stars and Legends get together to play some street football, just as you might play in the park... with a few unrealistic elements thrown in for fun.

As a sample to see whose available from each team, let me give you the Rams lineup for the game:

QB: Kurt Warner
RB: Marshall Faulk
WR: Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt
OL: Orlando Pace, Kyle Turley
DL: Leonard Little, Grant Wistrom
LB: Jamie Duncan, Tommy Polley
DB: Adam Archuleta, Aeneas Williams

So hardly a leaguewide game.

One of the most fun elements is a pickup game. The computer assembles a random pool of players and occassionally legends and you take turns picking them, just as you would picking teams as kids. The player that picks second gets the ball first.

Occassionally the game will add a couple of Legends to the selection. Usually if it adds one, it'll add a second, so I don't worry about picking first so I can get a legend, as I'd rather have the ball first. But be sure to look at everyone available before you make your first pick.

Legends in the game are:

QB: Ken Stabler
RB: Larry Csonka, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders
DL: Howie Long, William Perry
LB: Lawrence Taylor
DB: Lester Hayes, Ronnie Lott

One drawback is that the legends are the only ones in the game that can wear actual football jerseys. It's nice GETTING to wear other stuff, but I should still get to wear jerseys if I want. It's even odder given that one of the possible outfits is team colored basketball jerseys.

You can also compete in the "ladder mode", creating a team of your own and developing them through straight out games and special challenges against the NFL teams.

Gameplay wise, it's best described as an analogy... NFL Street is to NFL Blitz as NBA Street is to NBA Jam. Besides winning the game, style is a big emphasis. Success on the field plus style helps fill up your Gamebreaker meter. Once it's full, activate it, and you'll be in Gamebreaker mode until a change of possession. As the offense, you become near impossible to tackle or intercept. As the defense, you'll become hard to advance on at all, and if you control the player making the tackle, you'll cause a turnover.

Use them on defense.

Play differs slightly from NFL rules... there's no kicking game. The field is divided into quarters, and you start on the 1st quarter line and have 4 downs to make it to the next line. Wherever you end up after getting a 1st down, it's still only to the next quarter line to get a first down... therefore you can easily end up with 1st and 1, even when not at the goal. Touchdowns are 6 points. For conversions, if you run the ball in, it's 1 point, passing is 2 points, if the defense gets the ball and runs it back to the other end zone, it's 4 points for them.

It's not NFL Blitz... but it's a lot of fun... and if you don't like Madden, it's the only officially licensed alternative left in town.

I'll rate it ****1/2.

Tomorrow: The first part of DC's Countdown to Infinite Crisis