Monday Night Football - PC Review - Gamecenter

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Monday Night Football

continued
"hey Al, we've got time to hit the beer line"
What's even more frustrating, during league play it takes 40 minutes to simulate the other teams' results. The computer plays through the other games, and there is nothing to do but watch an incrementing scoreboard for 40 minutes. This supposedly adds realism to the statistics, but Week 1 had New Orleans over San Francisco 58-14, the Jets over Denver 42-19, and Tampa Bay over Green Bay 76-23. Random numbers would be more accurate and a lot quicker.
Monday Night Football is simply not a fun action game. You can control players with a gamepad, but response is awkward and less realistic than other action-oriented football games. There's only one juke move, no speed control, and no interaction with the kicking game whatsoever.
Although you can use a network or modem to challenge opponents, you can only play head-to-head games in coaching mode, and two people can't play on the same PC. Calling Monday Night Football a multiplayer action game is like calling Quake a strategic military simulation, which it is--technically speaking. Monday Night Football is designed more for the coach than the player. The manual devotes a great deal of space to explaining plays and positions but neglects to mention the joystick controls--this game is in dire need of a reference card.
Lynn's with the coach now
Coaching is handled nicely, however, and the play selector is one of the best I've seen. The intuitive mouse-based interface makes choosing from hundreds of plays very easy, and new plays can be created at the line of scrimmage using a powerful play editor. Clicking on a player presents a graphical tree of routes, and choosing an end point selects the desired path. Each man's blocking, running, or passing route can be changed on the fly, and the play can be saved for future snaps. Of course, this level of play-calling isn't practical in real time, and the play editor is generally put to better use before the game starts.

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Monday Night Football

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