Pocket Sports Football Review

Want to have a good football game on your iDevice? Well until now, that hasn’t been possible.

In PocketSports Football, you can, as the title suggests, play a simple game of football. You can either play a full season, or a quick play game. In both of these modes, you can adjust quarter length to be one, two, or three minutes long.

I myself prefer one minute quarters, because the game lacks a save feature. This way, if you only have a few minutes to play, you can still get in a full game of football. After all, this is a mobile device.

To control the game, you can use one of two control methods. The first and default setting is tilt. You tilt to move your player in various situations, which can range from running the ball to returning a kickoff or chasing down your opponents wide receiver. When on offense, you can tilt your iDevice to pan the quarterback’s view.

When you select a play, if it is a passing play each of the players will have a transparent circle above their heads. To throw to them, just tap that circle while they are running their routes. During a passing play, you may also tap one of the on-screen A and B buttons to allow you to perform a quarterback sneak (Running with the quarterback). To punt, just select it from the play list menu and the game will automatically do it for you.

The second control scheme is the use of an on-screen D-Pad. It is the same as the tilt controls, except you need to use the D-Pad as a joystick rather than tilting the device.

The controls actually work pretty well, but the D-Pad, which is my preferred method of control, can be a little unresponsive sometimes. It’s nothing that kills the game-play, but an easy solution to this would be to create a dynamic control scheme.

The graphics in PocketSports Football are definitely not pushing the iPhone’s graphics capabilities, however are not terrible and allow the game to play without a single frame rate issue. In a future update, I would like to see graphics updates, provided the frame rate is not affected.

The audio in PocketSports Football is pretty simple. There is the quiet cheering of fans in the background, in addition to the usual grunting noises and smashing of helmets. The music in the menus consists of some simple beats, nothing more, nothing less.

In PocketSports Football, there are 32 different plays to choose from (excluding punts). 16 of those plays are on offense and 16 are on defense. These plays are separated into four categories. The offensive categories are Shotgun, Power I, Twins, and 2 Wides. The defensive categories are Balanced, Heavy, Goal Line, and Safe. I would love to see more plays in an update, because 32 plays just aren’t enough.

In PocketSports Football, the season mode, while nice, leaves a fair amount to be desired. In an update, I would like to see abilities to customize a character, as well as develop and improve your team.

Another welcomed addition would be a play creator. I would love to create my own passing and running plays! That would make the game immensely better.

Overall, PocketSports Football does a pretty good job of bringing a football game to the iPhone’s touch screen, which is anything but an easy task. It has its issues, but for a football fan like me it does the job. Fans of Madden may be slightly upset by the game’s lack of depth, but for a small fraction of the price, I think a purchase of this game is justified.

The Good
—————–
- Nice game-play
- Well implemented controls
- Fun to play

The Bad
—————–
- Lack of plays
- Season mode lacks depth
- Graphics could use some work

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Tags: football, madden, NFL, Sports

Category: Games