Ah, the beauty and the wonder of a new season. School is back in session. New episodes are on TV – well, streaming TV. It’s fantastic really. Summer is gradually bleeding away to fall and bringing with it the best part of the year. Of course, many people are excited about the weather cooling and the upcoming spooky season, but I? I’m ready for football season.
Oh yeah! Football, football, football! That time when I get to sit down, jump up, scream at the TV, and share a laugh and/or cry with my best friends over an oblong ball and whether it’s on the correct side of the line. Truly, it doesn’t get better than this. And while we’re already a few weeks into the season, I’m only just now getting into the spirit of the season personally.
This year I finally have a chance (albeit probably a bit late) to play some Wild Card Football. Now, for those who aren’t as familiar with the old f-ball sport, it’s actually quite the clever name. The wild cards in the NFL are the teams that didn’t win their division to automatically make it into the playoffs at the end of the regular season but do have the best records otherwise. Basically, you aren’t the champs, but you aren’t the scrubs, either. On top of that the developers at Saber Interactive included some crazy, random power-ups to the game that they notably call Wild Cards.
If playing a pseudo football match with crazy moves sounds familiar, that’s because back in the heyday of the late ’90s we had NFL Blitz. It started with the basic American sport but removed the annoying parts like penalties, illegal tackles, and general rules of order and replaced it with outright chicanery. It was a fun time.
Now, Wild Card Football arrived with some similar promise of practical jokes in the sport – or so I thought. It actually released last year – for a staggering $30! Well, I wasn’t about to be bamboozled so blatantly on a title that is clearly meant to be a free-to-play and silly experience. So I missed out on it last year. But a month or so ago, I saw it drop as a free title in the Epic Games store. Now, with a free copy of Wild Card Football in my hands, I’m actually able to play and share the joy with all you fine football fans!
Wild Card Football is designed for my type of football fan
Despite my bluster above, I’m not actually a huge football fan. At least not a huge fan of the NFL. I do really love college sports and college football in particular. Nevertheless, that love of the season has made me a regular in some fantasy football leagues and kept me more in-the-know on who’s who in the NFL. And for me, Wild Card Football really is the right amount of actual football mixed with video game antics.
I couldn’t tell you actual play names (I assume they all have names). The wild cat is a cool one. But in Wild Card Football, I really just need to know what sort of play I want to use: a run, a short pass, or a long pass. There are of naturally some options for which run play to go with, but it’s simplified enough that I’m able to keep up. I press OK, and the players all line up for my chosen play – simple and straightforward. The little play dialogue shows me where my players are going to go, and I just have to try to execute it.
On the defensive side of the ball, I’m given a view of how the opposing team is lined up. Presumably I can infer from this the likelihood of a passing play versus a run play, but I’m not even that well-versed – but I can take a guess. I’m then given a similar set of options to use to try to counter-play the offense, and away we go.
Other than just simplifying the every down play calls, Wild Card Football has also reduced the number of players on the field. Rather than full 11-person teams, we have only seven. We also aren’t actually playing as any real NFL teams. Instead, a bunch of different real NFL players are included – but not the teams themselves. I guess the game was supported by the players’ group rather than the NFL. No love lost from me there.
Each match is also much shorter (thank goodness) than a real game. The game is still broken up into quarters, but each one is only a few minutes long. By the time I thought about it, I’d already been playing a few downs.
And that’s one thing that really surprised me about Wild Card Football. I was truly, honest to goodness, having a lot of fun each match. A whole match start to finish clocked in close to 30 minutes, which is well outside my normal threshold, and yet I wasn’t upset. I was just having fun.
Only a couple of the powers are truly wild
Other than the weird proportions on the players, the game kind of plays like a regular football video game, except for one small wrinkle: those wild cards. These are unique abilities that you’re able to choose to invoke after you’ve chosen your play but before the down begins.
Most of the time, they’re actually fairly tame. It’s not that they aren’t impactful, just that they’re tame. Sometimes I was using skills that increased the speed of this player or that one, or even reducing the speed of the opposing team. Sometime they would make my blockers stronger. Simple things that just add a bit of flavor to an otherwise normal game. A lot of the time this is where I felt I was actually able to play a bit strategically. Not only would I choose a play that I hoped would counter the other side’s play, but I could also choose a wild card to help it.
For instance, if I was pretty sure the other team was going to throw the ball next, and if I happened to have the -50% accuracy on passes card up, I could pop that and see my opposition wildly fail to deliver the package to the receiver. A great feeling.
Apparently there’s a deck of cards available, and you’ll have four in your hand at a time. More powerful cards cost more mana to cast. OK, so they don’t call it mana in Wild Card Football, but after every play, you regenerate a few points of energy, which can be spent to use your cards. It’s mana. Football with mana.
As I said, most of the powers are just buffs or banes like that. However, there are some that are actually wild. One of them will transform your active player into a giant that simply smashes through the opponents. Another popped up a bunch of pinball bouncer things. They were seriously awesome. Since I’m a new player, I didn’t have a lot of those or see them come into play very often. But they did make me laugh out loud when timed right.
Bringing all of this back around to NFL Blitz, I have to say I’m pretty surprised. The gameplay feels much more like a real game of football with some fun flair. Of course, some of those super powerups I mentioned are wild, but we’re still following the rules here. You can’t punch other players or do that much outside the rules of regular football.
The monetization is setup for a free to play game but it’s not free!
I mentioned it at the top, and it’s worth saying again: This game sells for $30! It’s just so clearly meant to be free-to-play that I can’t comprehend the thinking here. The monetization is honestly not out of control either. The developers have all the valves and levers ready to go to really monetize it out the wazoo, but it’s under control, minus that box price. There are certainly some cosmetic packs and add-ons that you can purchase, but that’s really it.
You have so many great ways to customize your team. Everything from the name of your hometown and team name to the jerseys and helmets. I mean, the Kashtillians came out hot, but not as hot as this player who actually had one of the upgraded outfit packs!
There’s a lot to really love about Wild Card Football. I’m honestly shocked to say it. I went into this one expecting to be hilariously annoyed, and instead I’m impressed. Not only can you play in matches and climb the rankings, but the devs also built a full offline mode for playing a season just against the PC. If you want to play against a friend in couch co-op, that’s here too. We aren’t going to have the wild of matches that we did in NFL Blitz, but I think there’s certainly fun to be had.
Wild Card Football is available wherever you get your game on, so if you’ve got the cash to spare on a football game, check it out. It’s actually a good time. If it were free-to-play, I’d be recommending you go play right now. As it is, though, oof it’s just hard to justify that cost for most gamers.
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
