Phantasy Star Online originated for the Sega Dreamcast back in 2000, and was eventually ported to Gamecube and Xbox later in 2002. Despite a very limited North America release, Nintendo actually developed a GCN network adapter specifically for fanboys who wanted to get the full PSO experience—I’m talking online co-op, complete with a monthly subscription fee in order to connect and play with other people around the world. Did you know Gamecube was even capable of pretending it could host an MMO? Apparently neither did anyone else–even the people who bought the game. Back in its heyday, there were never more than like a couple hundred people online at peak hours, and most of them were busy using exploits to duplicate items and make their characters godly.

Servers have long since been shut down, but nowadays the game can still be enjoyed offline in four-player splitscreen. Phantasy Star Online has definitely withstood the test of time, boasting some of the most lucratively addictive gameplay I’ve ever experienced. In high school I remember the momentous day where I cleared over one-thousand hours of played time spread across a couple of different characters—that’s unheard of, for a console game. Unfortunately I lost the bulk of my game saves when my memory card specifically reserved for PSO corrupted, but that has never stopped me; every so often I give PSO a play, and each revisit reminds me of how simple and fun SEGA’s retro-inspired dungeon crawler is. Over a decade later, the game has proven itself timeless.

Plot & Characters

Since players get to generate their own characters in Phantasy Star Online and the entire plot consists of about two paragraphs of dialogue, this category is essentially moot–but hey, we’ll go with it! Character creation has players choosing from humans, robots called “CASTs”, or newmans, which are essentially further evolved space humans with advanced magical powers and waning physical strength. Classes consist of hunter, ranger, and force, the latter of which being equivalent to a mage. One of the coolest aspects of PSO is that classes don’t restrict you entirely as to what you can and cannot wield or wear; the only stipulation that ever really intrudes is that CASTs can’t use magic, but can instead deploy hovering traps that inflict different status ailments on groups of mobs as they trudge towards you.

Creation options offer a few sliders to mess with your character’s height and width, and believe me when I say those sliders can be utilized to their fullest extent. Every time I played with one of my friends back in high school, someone would make a new character with ridiculous physical attributes, like to the point where it was hilarious to watch them go through some of the attack and defense animations. Players can also choose from a few pre-set faces for their character, and select color schemes for their armor and hairstyle. These features can all be changed for a 10,000 meseta fee via the game’s “dressing room” that is unlocked after completing your first playthrough. Generally, the customization options offer enough room for variety that you’ll hardly ever encounter another character that resembles yours, leaving you feeling one of a kind and satisfied.

One thing’s for sure though: every person that plays Phantasy Star Online has created a Sephiroth character at some point in their life. You know—as tall as can be, black outfit, long white hair, evil-looking face? Also, it is virtually impossible to create a CAST ranger that doesn’t look like a trash truck, ambulance, fire engine, or a piece of construction equipment, due to their default stature being atypically gargantuan. But you know what? Everyone is fine with that, because as stupid as your dude or dudette may look, the game is still so fun that it doesn’t even matter. In fact, looking back, I think the hilarity of the character models definitely adds a lot more to the PSO experience than it detracts.

Sound

You know you’re playing a jRPG when the opening cutscene is presented in the form of a music video with a forlorn Asian woman crooning in front of a synthesized piano track. Whether you’re into anime soundtracks, techno/dance music, or minimalistic ambiance, Phantasy Star Online has you covered. When you’re managing your inventory or resurrecting a teammate back in Pioneer-3, the intercom is playing a lovely piece of techno mood-music that keeps you happy and reminds you that you’re hanging out in a giant shopping mall in a video game…that’s literally the best way to describe it, trust me. Each field in the game has its own couple of songs that rotate, depending on the situation you and your teammates encounter. Bosses bring with them their own theme music, although their songs aren’t nearly as memorable as the fights they offer. Final Phantasy, this is not.

PSO’s soundtrack compliments its environments and gameplay perfectly; the songs never feel out of place, and do a great job establishing an ambiance for their respective atmospheres. Weapon and character sounds accomplish what they set out to convey, while keeping up with the game’s colorful, almost whimsical appearance. Oh, and if you’re ever fortunate enough to discover a gag weapon hidden deep within the game’s toughest difficulty, prepare to laugh at the sounds they produce upon impact.

Graphics

For their era, the graphics in Phantasy Star are pretty good. SEGA did a great job bringing an anime-style motif to life with fully 3D models and environments. Even the darkest areas in PSO are brimming with lavish colors and embellished with lots of tiny bursts of visual intensity. The level known as “ruins” is supposed to be a sort of nest for an alien race, and amidst all the shades of grey comprising the space ship they’ve taken over is an accent of lilacs, aquamarines, easter yellows, and neon pinks that compliments the environment perfectly and makes the enemies pop against their backdrop.

Since PSO is set in the pre-existing Phantasy Star universe, a lot of the series’ most iconic enemies make their return from the previous jRPGS and are brought to life in three dimensions. SEGA did come up with a whole new roster of baddies to unleash on players for PSO though, and they’re all very unique and reflective of their respective ecosystems. Sticking with the ruins map, the aforementioned aliens stand upright like humans, but walk around with scythe-like arms poised for attack and shark dorsal fins for heads. “Dimenions”, as they’re called, don’t have distinguishable eyes, noses, ears, or mouths, and their skin lights up and displays patterns like neon billboards as they stalk you through their home. It almost makes you feel bad for slicing through them to unlock the doors to the next area.

Gameplay

Phantasy Star is very fun to look at, and even more fun to play. On Gamecube, players are given two three-button palettes that can be freely assigned different types of combat moves, spells to cast, or items to use. One button brings up an in-game keyboard for online chat, and can be used to register messages to the d-pad for quick broadcasting while fighting. Shoulder buttons are used to center the camera and toggle between move palettes. It’s awesome that the face buttons can be reprogrammed at any time to allow you to develop your own control scheme, and if that isn’t enough, there are even button combos that act as shortcuts to your inventory and map if you need fast access to a different weapon or a view of the boss’ whereabouts.

PSO plays like a dungeon crawler; if you don’t know what that means, the main focus of the game is “pick level, kill dudes, loot treasures.” Longevity is garnered from a treadmilling character level system that is capped at a whopping 200, potentially offering hundreds upon hundreds of hours to be spent grinding in a single save file. Time goes by very quickly while playing PSO though because the thrill of the hunt is very real and omnipresent—with each enemy you defeat, there exists a chance for a rare item to drop, and this game, perhaps more than any other game I’ve ever played, has some of the coolest and most memorable rare weapons and armor. Each weapon is named, offering a glimpse into what may be considered PSO‘s “lore” for lack of a better term, and shows up on your character as a heavily modified version of one of the game’s conventional weapons. Named armor doesn’t show up per se, but rare sets usually offer minor aesthetic change in the form of some sort of aura surrounding your dude. In PSO, you know someone is leet when you see them enveloped in a could of smoke, or surrounded by pulsating laser rings.

Another piece of gear that plays heavily into PSO is the MAG, a small robotic familiar for your character that offers stat boosts, special moves called “photon blasts”, and even invulnerability or resurrection if it likes you enough. Every five minutes or so, players can feed their MAGs extra items they’re carrying to increase HP, attack, defense, or accuracy. Every level the MAG gains translates into an extra point to the stat for the character (except for accuracy…that’s every two points, for some reason). Eventually as MAGs levels up, they will evolve and learn photon blasts that can then be used as the player deals and receives damage to build up a meter. Photon blasts generally deal large amounts of damage to a group of enemies, but some offer large temporary stat boosts or powerful healing to the team as support. Like players, a MAG can be leveled all the way to 200 as well.

What’s awesome about MAGs is that they aren’t bound to the specific character by which they’re raised; if I start a hunter and raise his MAG to level 100, I could then unequip it and give it to another character who is level one to give them a giant head start. MAGs offer a whole new level of meta-customization that allows for heavy alteration of character stats, and raising a MAG only adds to the compounding fun of Phantasy Star Online.

Overall

Remember earlier when I chose to ignore the plot category entirely? Here’s what happens, and I swear on Red Ring Rico’s grave, there is zero exaggeration here: when you create a new character, the game dumps you straight in front of the “President” of Pioneer-3, your space colony searching for a new planet capable of sustaining life, and he tells you to go clear the forest of some indigenous creatures that are threatening your new colonies on planet Ragol. After you purge the forest and return to him, he says, “Good. Now go clear these caves.” Next comes the mines, and then the ruins after that, and before you know it, you actually beat the game.

That’s right. Phantasy Star Online has four levels, and the longest one takes about 90 minutes if you are at the target level and brandishing mediocre weapons. What it does with those four levels, however, is amazing and completely ahead of its time–very much like the system on which it originally debuted . After you beat the four levels in PSO or advance your character to level 20, you unlock hard mode, and the dynamics of the game begin to change. After running through hard or hitting 40, you are pitted against very hard mode, and after clearing that or hitting 80, you are granted access to ultimate mode. Ultimate mode transforms the game entirely as it reskins, reworks, and renames every enemy you’ll encounter; they all become hideous mutated forms of their former selves, and they are all very capable of destroying you.

If beating the same four levels three times in a row just to get to the part of the game where things get interesting which also happens to be the end sounds horrible to you, fret not; every time you boot up PSO, the dungeon layouts are completely different. PSO’s levels are comprised of premade rooms with preset enemy spawns and container locations, laid out in a grid-like pattern to generate a map. In other words, the levels feel memorable enough that you’ll never really get lost, but different enough that it keeps the maps from ever feeling too repetitive.

The ride to ultimate mode may feel the same each time you play, but there are some subtle tweaks beneath the hood that completely change the way the game functions. Once you unlock hard mode, each enemy in the game has a slight chance of dropping a rare weapon, or monster part that can be crafted into a rare weapon. On very hard, the rare weapons become cooler, more effective, and slightly more common, and by ultimate mode, every enemy has a chance to drop a weapon that, if its stats are jacked, can redefine your entire character and play style.

Those rare items are responsible for some of my favorite, most triumphant memories as a gamer. In Phantasy Star Online, items drop from enemies in small, color-coded boxes; orange boxes are weapons, blue boxes are armor, green boxes are usable items, and yellow boxes are money. If you’re ever fortunate enough to encounter a red box, however, you’ve found yourself a rare. Every single time I down a monster in PSO and see a red corner poking through the remnants as they fade away, my eyes widen, my grip on the controller tightens, I begin to hold my breath, and my heart stops beating entirely…every single time. Even if I’m still engaged in battle with other mobs, I’ll rush over to the box and feel a wave of triumph wash over me as “?????RARE WEAPON?????” appears on my screen. Sure, I’ve probably collected hundreds of copies of the same rares over the years (curse you, Storm Wand: Indra) , but the excitement still persists to this day, and its honestly one of the greatest feelings to be had in gaming. PSO really is timeless for that reason–I think I’ll be leveling up my CAST hunter and my newman force until the day I die.

And I assure you, it’s a labor of undying love.

(I did a brief stint as a writer at a new gaming website called ComicBooked.com — you can check out the original article right here.)

It’s been three and a half years since Soul Calibur IV was released, and since then fighting fanatics have witnessed the resurrection of Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, and Mortal Kombat—three behemoths that dominate the genre here in the United States. As terrifying as that may sound for the folks at Project Soul, they’ve returned in 2012 with their most impressive offering to date; Soul Calibur V boasts the best online play I’ve ever experienced in a fighting game, a roster full of new faces, and a perfect balance of combat tweaks and additions that feel new and exciting, yet minimal enough to preserve the sense of nostalgia that has transcended the series since Soul Edge.

Plot and Characters
The opening scene of Soul Calibur V feels familiar as soon as it begins; Nightmare and Siegfried are locked in their eternal battle that has spanned four games without resolution. Light refracts brilliantly through the gem inlaid in the hilt of Siegfried’s Soul Calibur while Nightmare’s Soul Edge is looking just as meaty as ever, grinning a mouthful of fangs as it collides headfirst with its rival. Elsewhere, Patroklos—the son of Sophitia—embarks on a misguided quest to rescue his sister Pyrrha from Tira.

And yeah, their names totally rhyme.

Story mode relies on Soul Calibur’s signature inexplicable flip-flop between animated cutscenes and narrated storyboards to convey why you’re fighting, but even after paying close attention I’m not entirely sure what happened. I will say this though: throughout the course of the story (which lasts about three hours without skipping any cutscenes), you will travel through time once or twice, and wield a weapon that is also a goddess. It’s like Bionic Commando’s wife arm ridiculousness all over again, and it’s totally oedipal; I’m stoked on it. Although slightly convoluted, the story is definitely enjoyable—I hope you like fighting as Sophitia and Cassandra though, because they’re essentially your only options, save for one or two levels where the perspective changes.

Since Soul Calibur V is set some twenty-odd years after the previous entry in the series, a few of the veterans were actually scrapped in favor of more youthful fighters who practice the same techniques as their predecessors. Kilik, Xianghua, Cassandra and Sophitia, and Taki have been replaced with newcomers, while Yung Sung, Sueng Mina, Zasalamel, Amy, Setsuka, and Talim are nowhere to be found at the start of the game. Don’t get too worried though; after playing through the story and unlocking a few characters, you’ll start to fill those empty slots on the roster screen with familiar faces. All of the new characters are enjoyable in their own rights, and the new fighting styles Project Soul has introduced seem very fun and challenging. I’m anxious to see if the online community embraces Z.W.E.I., who wields a short sword and is accompanied by a floating mechanical werewolf, or the mysterious Viola, who favors her mystical orb and slightly creepy claw-glove.

Character creation makes its triumphant return as well, sporting a new layering feature that lets you personalize your armor by placing patterns and decals on each piece. It’s a welcome addition that I’m hoping will fill the online lobbies to the brim with unique fighters—one of my favorite aspects of the game. While I adore the entire cast of Soul Calibur (even Voldo), I’ve always been more interested in what other people come up with and parade around in player matches. My only complaint so far is that most of the weapons and armor are seemingly pulled straight from Soul Calibur IV; it feels like Project Soul left it up to the players to make character customization more robust, like they just left us with a new tool and figured we’d find a way to get the most out of it. Challenge accepted.

Sound
My friends and I have a little tradition we’ve been practicing since Soul Calibur II: every time a new iteration of the game releases, we head into the options menu and change the voice language from English to Japanese before we even make it to the character select screen to battle. To preserve the integrity of this review though, I decided to keep it on English for my first experience, and I’m actually proud of myself—I made it maybe two or three whole hours. As funny as it is to hear Maxi yell, “You gotta be kidding me!” or Siegfried cry, “You planned this!” as they’re ring-outed, it eventually starts to feel too silly for me. Voice acting has never been Soul Calibur’s strong suit, and Five is no different; while it’s certainly not game-ruining, I prefer the language setting on Japanese because it creates a stronger sense of immersion.

The soundtrack, however, completely makes up for the voice acting. I’ve always really enjoyed the background music Soul Calibur provides as I battle my friends and computers alike, and Five definitely delivers more of the same…caliber that I’ve come to expect from the series. Each level has its own distinct song that starts as the competitors make their opening remarks, but the stage select screen also includes a new song select option that allows you to pair your favorite arena with your favorite instrumental. Day one DLC  even includes a handful of music packs that can bolster the already large collection, if you choose to purchase any—they’re a dollar each. What’s more, there’s a free download that allows you to preview the premium songs from within the game, so you can sample what you’ll potentially be paying for.

Graphics
Soul Calibur V is beautiful—that being said though, it’s only marginally more beautiful than Four. Character models don’t look as improved as I imagine they could (or should, given that it’s been three and a half years), but the clothing and backgrounds are definitely more embellished than in the previous edition. When things get moving though, Soul Calibur V is like a visual symphony of stunning, vibrant color and highly stylized movement lines that follow weapons and characters as they dance elegantly across the gorgeous battlefields. I find that you can’t truly appreciate the game’s visuals unless you’re watching other competitors engaged in battle, so you can dedicate all your senses to seeing, hearing, and feeling what SCV has to offer.

Gameplay
Surprisingly, the online mode sports the best lobby and spectator system I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, and the netcode feels rock solid, even during release week when there’s a high amount of traffic. Created rooms for player and ranked matches can hold up to six people, four of whom can watch the battle and talk amongst themselves or comment via a text-chat box that has my friends and me way too excited. Seriously though, I was happy when I discovered Soul Calibur V even had spectator mode, but when I realized that I had the option to either watch the fight between my friends in all its full-screen glory, or windowed so that I could check who was in the lobby and converse with them, I was overcome with joy. Every other fighting game needs to take notes from Project Soul on this one, because they totally nailed it; this system really needs to become a new genre standard.

And finally, I’ve been saving the best for last: the actual combat.

If you’ve never played Soul Calibur before, it’s unique in that it’s a  three-dimensional fighter, meaning up and down movements result in sidesteps instead of jumping and ducking. Blocking is performed  by holding a face button rather than tilting the stick away from your opponents, and there is far less reliance on quarter-circle and charge movements than you may be used to. Instead, combat is focused more on flow, chaining attacks together based on timing rather than input. Learning to alternate between high, mid, and low attacks plays a very important role in Soul Calibur, as does knowing when it’s safe to attack. Even the slowest characters have a few quick jabs that will inevitibly catch you off-guard and open you up for some major punishment, especially when you’re lying on the ground. Unblockable attacks, forecast by wrapping flames and a sudden eclipse over the battlefield, are also prevalent in combat.

Upon picking it up myself and jumping straight into arcade mode as Mitsurugi, an awesome combination of muscle memory and nostalgia took over for me and I destroyed the first couple of AI combatants I faced–great news for those of you thinking about getting back into the series. Not much has changed beneath the hood aside from movesets (they’re different characters with the same weapons, mind you), but there are a couple of additions that add elements of familiar accessibility and much deeper strategy than the series has never seen.

Fighters now each have a gauge at the end of their health bars that charges as you complete special moves and combos, and as you receive damage. There are five or six sections to the bar that allow you to supercharge certain moves—think Street Fighter’s ex-moves—or perform guard impacts, flashy green parries that were previously performed by pressing block and any direction the instant your opponent landed a blow. It kind of sucks that you need to use portions of your meter to effectively counter your opponent now, but to account for this, Project Soul implemented another parry called a “just counter” which is performed essentially in the exact same way as guard impacts were in the previous games. You just need to time your block perfectly (and I mean perfectly, because I’ve only ever gotten it to work once or twice in maybe nine or ten hours of play) and you’ll deflect your opponent’s attack while looking and feeling like the coolest dude ever.

Gauges can also be utilized to perform “critical edges”, another new addition that functions like a hyper combo in Street Fighter or the x-ray attack in Mortal Kombat, in that they slow the flow of combat so the user may perform a flashy combo. At first, I was very hesitant about the idea because it seemed too Street Fighter-y, but after no more than an hour my mind was completely changed and the borrowed mechanics assimilated seamlessly into the combat I so desperately missed over the past few years.

Overall
While this newest iteration of Soul Calibur plays better than all the rest, it feels slightly incomplete. Story mode is short and offers no replayability; arcade mode, as always, can be blown through in about ten minutes; and quick battle is meant to offer bouts one at a time, so as to appease the casual fighter who is only looking to go one or two rounds before throwing in the towel. Gone are the tower ascent challenges and the tower descent survival mode from Four—two of my favorite parts of the game—and the gold system has been abandoned in favor of a new “player points” system, which rewards you for every fight in which you take part…except for two-player local versus. When will developers stop punishing players who enjoy battling against their friends in their own homes?

Accumulated points eventually lead players to level up and unlock everything from new stages and background music, to new custom creation pieces, to new titles for their player cards. With a plethora of rewards to reap, each level feels satisfying and keeps you excited to hit that next ding. By scrapping the gold system, however, Project Soul has taken away the ability to select exactly what you want to unlock once you’ve saved up. In fact, you can’t even see locked items in the creation mode; while that does make it more exciting when you receive a new piece, it would be nice to be able to select and purchase a couple appealing pieces instead of hoping and waiting.

Honestly though, these are mere gripes that hardly detract from the overall experience. Soul Calibur V offers a unique change in core gameplay that a stagnating fighting genre has needed for about a year now. Project Soul has always been really good about keeping their games shoto-kan free, choosing instead to focus their combat on feats of finesse. Five isn’t completely ignorant of the playing field, however; multiple additions have been included to keep the multiplayer component of their game on par with its Capcom competition, and in quite a few cases it feels like they’ve even done some things better.

(I did a brief stint as a writer at a new gaming website called ComicBooked.com — you can check out the original article right here.)

Despite releasing only 72 hours ago, EA’s resurrection of classic Midway gridiron series NFL Blitz is being flamed hard on pretty much every forum I’ve visited so far. Most of the hate is premature and based solely on speculation, but some of the complaints I’ve read can be legitimized by considering that the newest generation of gamers may have never experienced the original titles in their collective heyday. They also seem to be approaching Blitz with pre-conditioned expectations of what a football game should be, thanks to the omnipotent Madden franchise. In essence, there are two simple facts that need to be kept in mind when downloading Blitz and getting ready for the action:

This is 2012, and this game costs $15.

As kids, my brother and I played copious amounts of Blitz against each other on Nintendo 64, and the overwhelming sense of nostalgia that we experienced in tandem over Xbox Live on Blitz’s launch night attests to how faithfully EA has recreated the original. What’s more impressive is that they’ve managed to keep the tweaks so subtle that they’ve preserved the original experience I was hoping for andkept the gameplay from feeling aged—impressive, considering the original NFL Blitz debuted in arcades in 1997.

If you’ve never played Blitz before, the gameplay is nothing like what you’re probably accustomed to with conventional next-gen football titles. Each game is seven on seven with two-minute quarters and a timeclock that stops after every play—not just on incomplete passes or when the ball goes out of bounds. There are no timeouts or challenges, and first downs are 30 yards instead of ten. There are zero rushing plays, and there are literally no penalties.

It plays just as ridiculous as it reads, trust me.

It’s also just as fun as it sounds. My brother and I were afraid of the questionable tactics that random player matches could have potentially delivered us, but we quickly found a way to counter every strategy that we encountered and managed to win all three co-op games we played. Someone blitzing you every single play? Run an option and perform a turbo jump-pass to dodge the tackle and create a running opportunity. Receivers kicking your defensive backs down and running their routes wide open? Cut in front of them and intercept the ball yourself, or destroy them at the line of scrimmage to render them useless, or hurl yourself at them as the pass is in the air—there’s no pass interference in Blitz, so it’s all legal.

The additions EA did include are mostly online-centric in an effort to create levels of competition you’d find in actual arcades. Blitz boasts both local and online co-op that allows you to play against the AI, or player and ranked matches against real-life opponents. My brother and I teamed up online and took on a series of other gamers on Wednesday with little to no lag; we searched for and found opponents every instance in a matter of seconds, which is impressive for any game on launch night. Perhaps the coolest feature of four-player online co-op is that the game swaps who calls the plays and acts as QB each drive, so you and your partner both get ample time to manage and control your team.

Akin to high score screens that flash up on arcade machines, a complex series of region-specific leaderboards that increase in prestige and decrease in size as you rank up offer finite amounts of spots to keep ranked players engaged. At this point in time it’s all a bit confusing because the boards aren’t yet populated, but I imagine that they’ll become easier to comprehend as the online community begins to grow in size and competitive desire. And it will, because a bunch of Blitz’s 20 achievements are directly tied to your online prowess.

Included also is a gauntlet-style arcade mode that allows you to unlock special players that can be used both offline and online with the input of a three character code on the pre-game loading screen. As of now I’m not sure if these unlockable dudes boast better stats than normal players or if they’re just unique skins, but I’d wager to guess it’s just an outfit to make you laugh. If it’s the same as the older Blitzes, the skin will amusingly jump from player to player as you switch; there was nothing funnier than watching beefy dudes suddenly transform into Raidens and hurl themselves headfirst at the opposing team as I mashed the dude-switch button and tackle in a syncopated flurry back in the late 90s.

The coolest new feature is definitely the fantasy-esque mode called “elite league” that has you purchasing card packs with your credits earned from online matches and using your spoils to create an all-star team of pros. Each player has individual stats that can be stacked and combined to give everyone on your team bonuses—even the players who may not excel in that field. However, to keep you from initially stacking your team with little to no effort, each player comes with a contract time that slowly expires as you use them in games. You can renew the contract for a fee to keep them on your roster if it’s a player that you really like, or you can choose to let it expire and fill the void with another player you’ve collected from a card pack.

If you manage to assemble an entire NFL team of cards, Blitz allows you to trade the team in for a pro player with a permanent stat boost and an infinite contract. These pro players can then be collected and traded in for an ultimate player who is even more juiced. Your elite league team can be used online in a risk and reward mode that pits you against another elite opponent, with the winner earning the right to rifle through the loser’s card collection and claim a player or a powerup as their own. While this thought is initially terrifying to me, I could see it becoming really fun as I gain a better grasp of the game mechanics. The only criticism I can muster is that I wish I didn’t have to use a uniform from a pre-existing NFL team to go along with my custom team name, logo, banner, and roster. But hey, like I said before, it’s a $15 arcade game—I’ll deal.

If you enjoyed the old-school Blitzes or the N64 and Playstation ports, or you’re looking for a frenetic alternative to the same two realism-driven football sims that EA and 2k games have been churning out for the past decade, then I highly recommend giving Blitz a shot. However, if you care enough about your custom-created offensive lineman’s pancakes-per-game season average to replay a dynasty game even after you’ve already won, you might want to try the demo first.