NFL 2K2

 Let's make it a tradition. Once again, we're kicking off a new year with an old sports game.

It almost feels wrong not to jump into some of the older Madden games, considering his unfortunate passing a few weeks ago. John Madden truly did transcend football and he deserves a lot of credit for introducing the game to people who otherwise wouldn't have cared in the slightest. The Madden titles weren't the first sports games, not by a longshot, but they are the most culturally relevant. Now, of course, EA essentially has a monopoly on the video game football market. But that wasn't always the case. I've already talked about Sony's NFL Gameday and the Tecmo Bowl series is considered classic for good reason. But neither of those series', or any of the countless other football titles on the market, really ever made the folks at EA sweat. They were content to compete with these other franchises, believing they had the superior product. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong, but Madden was always towards the top of the virtual football heap. But when NFL 2K first landed on the Dreamcast, EA had no choice but to take notice. The series ran for five years before EA went and signed an exclusivity deal with the NFL and NFLPA, but today we will be looking at NFL 2K2 for the PlayStation 2. This version was a Dreamcast port and apparently there are some slight differences. 2K2 was also ported to the XBox, but that version and its PS2 counterpart are identical.

A lot of hardcore, simulation football fans preferred the 2K series to Madden and after really sitting down and playing 2K2, I definitely understand why. You really need to have some understanding of football to call effective plays, especially on defense, and there's no option to have the computer select for you as there is in Madden. You needn't be Bill Belichick or Andy Reid, but if you don't know the difference between nickel and dime packages or 2 deep zone and press man to man coverage, you are going to struggle a lot more with 2K2 than you would with Madden. A lot of people hold the final 2K title, NFL 2K5 on a pedestal in that regard, but I think 2K2 felt even more like a sim. And honestly, I think it had better graphics than its predecessor. This is a good-looking game, I think it's better and more detailed graphically than even some later 2K and Madden titles, at least when players are standing still. It's still got that awkward, 6th gen look, but it did a better job of making the players look like who they are supposed to be than the Maddens of this era ever did. You can tell Michael Strahan is Michael Strahan, though it's not so detailed you can see the gap in his teeth. The sound is also very good, this was before licensed music was common in games so understandably, there isn't any here. However, the on-field sounds are great, and the announcing is solid. It may not be as memorable or organic as the commentary in Madden, but it's definitely better at analyzing the intricacies of the game.

2K2 uses the rosters from the start of the 2001 season and as always, it's kind of fun to look at as a time capsule of sorts. The Raiders are the highest rated team with the Buccaneers a close second. I guess they did a pretty good job of rating the teams, but they were a year off as those squads would meet in the Super Bowl in 2003. The Rams, the team that lost that year's Super Bowl, were the third highest rated team. The winners, the New England Patriots, were more towards the middle of the pack. This was in part due to having one of the lowest rated players in the game on their roster, a scrub third-string quarterback named Tom Brady, who has an overall rating of 45. My how times have changed. The Super Bowl Champion Ravens are also a strong team and their defense has a perfect 100 rating. They may have gotten crushed in the Super Bowl, but at least the Giants are good here! (To think I once thought that would be the low point of my Giants fandom. Again, how times have changed.) When evaluating how sports games rate players, I tend to look at the teams I root for as I am most familiar with their rosters and how their scores should be. Using the G-men as a baseline, I think 2K does a good job in this department, though the rating issues it did have were very egregious. Having Ike Hilliard rated higher than Amani Toomer is just incorrect and Ron "No Gain" Dayne is rated way too highly. It was pretty obvious he was a bust by this point, so why he had a rating in the 80's is beyond me.

That leads me to my biggest issue with the gameplay: it's entirely too easy to run the ball. I feel like this is largely because of the game physics, which emphasize realistic tackling animations. It's actually a lot more like modern Madden than 6th-gen Madden games are in this regard. I had more runs where I broke tackles than runs where I didn't and once I got any power running back going in the open field, it was game over (I had Dayne rush for 150 yards and 2 TDs in one game, I'm not even sure his career numbers reached those totals). Playing on Rookie was laughable, and the computer put up little to no resistance, even in the first few games I played where I had no idea what I was doing. Once I increased the difficulty it was a little better, but it was still too easy to run. Unlike modern Madden games, however, passing is fairly spot on and play action passes are totally viable. I really liked the passing in 2K2 and this may be the best offensive line A.I. I've ever seen when it comes to pass blocking. You can actually stand in the pocket and step up with more traditional passers, but your linemen will also adjust accordingly if you roll out with someone like Michael Vick.

While gameplay was a little more deliberate than it is in Madden, I found it to be way less stiff than it was in 2K2's predecessors. Players seem to move slowly, but fluidly and things like juke and spin moves feel more realistic than they do in Madden. The physics are ahead of their time and while it did lead to the aforementioned issues tackling ball carriers already in motion, it also helped 2K2 feel like more of a simulation and games look more like real games. The stadium and field graphics also looked very good, and the crowd animation was surprisingly strong for a title of this era. Again, these are little touches, but they are the kind of thing that is critically important in making sports simulations feel like, well, simulations. It certainly helps that the controls are tight and the A.I. was relatively fair. That's another area where I believe 2K outshines Madden. There was no insane catch-up A.I. and I never got the vibe I was going to lose on a 73-yard field goal, though admittedly my sample size with the 2K series is much smaller. Still though, I just didn't have problems with a lot of the "tricks" Madden uses to pull off its ridiculous BS. If I called a prevent defense, my DBs actually dropped back and they didn't give up over the shoulder double tipped helmet catches with regularity like the DBs in Madden do when the computer just decides "you aren't winning."

The options in 2K2 are fairly limited by modern standards, but consistent with football games of its time. You have the option to play a season, tournament, playoffs or exhibition, as well as something called fantasy mode. This was essentially just a season, but with a re-draft of every single player taking place beforehand. There are also create a player and create a team, but the options are fairly sparse. This wouldn't be acceptable in a modern sports game, but it was par for the course in 2002. Franchise modes weren't really a thing at this point and we were still a few years away from real, consistent online play on consoles. It would have been nice to have some more customization in the options menus, but the game is well balanced enough that it's not a huge issue. At least the season mode allows you to trade, add free agents and edit your playbooks and audibles. Again, I wish there were more to do, but this was the norm for the era.

I've spent a lot of time comparing 2K2 to Madden and I'm not sure it would have been possible to avoid. So, I guess I will close by comparing the two one last time. I am obviously a big fan of Madden, at least the titles from the 6th gen era. So, if Madden is the sure fire, slam dunk, first ballot hall of famer, then 2K2...is pretty close. It may have to wait a year or two, but it belongs in Canton alongside its more popular brethren. I really enjoyed 2K2, even more than I did its predecessors. Again, I prefer Madden most years, but 2K is a strong choice and its different enough from EA's offering that it's worth playing both. Looking at it year to year, there are even a few editions where I would give 2K the edge and this is one of them. I'd fire up 2K2 over Madden 2002 any day, though it doesn't quite reach the levels of '03 or '04. It really is a shame that they don't make NFL 2K titles anymore, I would have loved to see what they were able to accomplish on modern hardware.

9.25/10