As I found myself being steadily engulfed by this year's football season, I really felt the urge to play a really good-looking football game. NFL GameDay 2002's task was to quench that urge. From first glance of Donovan McNab's face on the cover, I knew this game would look okay. Granted, being a football console game in this day and age requires a lot of effort to blur the ever-thinning line of reality and video game graphics. GameDay 2002 does a good job of mimicking reality. It's crisp colors attack you from all sides while you throw a perfect spiral. The photorealistic crowd roars its thunderous approval as you make a cut on a cornerback. With this year's new 3D player scanning technology and multiple player motion capturing , you get realistic looking players (with the exception of the linemen, who look like blocks of granite with arms still), and incredible gang tackles. The tackle animations look especially brutal as they should, I mean this isn't a tennis sim now is it? There have been new move animations added, and catch animations as well. All in all, it looks as good as any football game on the market, with the tackles taking home a blue ribbon in my county fair. 989 Sports made sure that all the stadiums were covered as well, and no stadium looked so good with a beautiful polygonal sun shining reassuringly through the clouds.

The music is an essential, and well-done part of the game, but everyone knows that football isn't football without the grunts and the commentary. So while you'll get your share of grunts, groans and grrrrrs, nothing says pigskin like Dan Fouts and Dick Enberg calling the play by play. The commentary is expert most of the time, with little being said to make you go 'huh?' They get excited on big plays, and equally disappointed on not so great plays...which in my case was often, as I can't run a hurry up offense to save my life. I can play defense though, and am an above average punter. I'm really hungry right now, so I'm off to get a corn dog. But, for NFL GameDay 2002's sake, let's say it sounds as pretty as a hunting dog who's treed a squirrel.

Well, as every sermon has its ending, alas mine must begin. This is where NFL GameDay 2002 takes a sharp decline. Of course, if you're a fan of any other football game that 989 Sports has done, then this one will be to your liking. I for one cannot get used to all the 'choppiness.' It seems as if the players, as wonderful as they look, are sporadic. The camera angles are wonderful as long as your players are stationary or running the ball, but as soon as you pass the ball, or intercept on defense, it seems as if the cameras are a little behind the action. Not seeing the action when I wanted to made me claustrophobic, which is a neat effect for a submarine action game, but not so desirable on the organic fields of the gridiron. The jukes appear to be too much, as players take wide, drawn out motions to fake out the AI. This to me makes the game more clunky than it needs to be, making me feel like I was controlling a garbage truck instead of a nimble, little tailback. To make a long story short, it's not as physics-adhering as Madden , yet lacks the overall fun, arcade feel like NFL 2k2 . All of the default football Modes are here like: Preseason Mode (pitting you against a foe for a quick challenge), Season Mode (pitting you against 16 foes to see if you make it to the playoffs and subsequently the Super Bowl), Tournament Mode (a few teams get together over some steak and fruit juice, and the winner is crowned Tournament champ), and finally GM, or General Manager Mode (that elects you to the position of General Manager where you control the salary of the players, and whom you trade and keep. You also control the draft picks, etc.). Out of all these Modes, my favorite was GM Mode where I had fun controlling my team. I would simulate the games so I could avoid playing them, and for the most part I had truckloads of joy.

Difficulty is a fleeting kind of word for football games. With control of options, actual game difficulty, and AI skills, you can make the game as easy, self-conforming, or as hard as you'd like. Points go to NFL GameDay 2002 for adhering to much admired ways. So, on the days where I felt like killing a team, that would be Easy, with AI turned all the way down. For the days where my feeble mind demanded a challenge...well still on Easy, but with the AI turned up. The control scheme doesn't hinder the game per se, but it does make the game feel very bulky. The controls aren't very sharp on cutbacks, yet sometimes the players will cut on a dime. It's as if 989 Sports was trying to cross Madden and NFL 2k2 , yet instead of ending up with a game that was middle ground between the two, they just made a lackadaisical middle of the road game, that would have benefited one way or the other control-wise.

Camera angles are original, and for the most part good, except for the few flaws aforementioned. The control scheme can take some getting used to, but if you're a fan of the series, fret not, as it will be as easy to you as marinating pork chops with a Cajun Injector . The manual explains everything you need to know as smoothly as my pre-K teacher urging me that eating paste only brings pain later in life. It takes up less space on a memory card than your other conventional football games, which is always a plus in my book.

Riot Rundown: Football at its best? Nah. Football worth anything? Sure is. NFL GameDay 2002 is a solid game, but with the quirkiness of the players, and some defensive AI silliness (though nothing big enough to deduct huge points...after all this is a sports game), it just wasn't as fun as I wanted it to be. Maybe I had too big of an expectation going in, but 989 Sports has definitely garnered high expectations after their wonderful college game this year. As with any football game, rent before you buy, and this might be a great fit to you; yet with me, there wasn't really anything fun about beautiful graphics that I couldn't see because I was stuck in General Manager Mode the whole time.