The fantasy teams, made
up of no-name players pushes it even further away for football fans. There's no season
play to give the game some depth, and multi-player fun isn't to be found. It misses all
the necessary points before it even makes it to the field.Things don't really improve there either. The cramped, close-quarters horizontal viewpoint is restrictive. Receivers are lost just a few yards downfield, and unlike Tecmo Bowl (and its various sequels) there's nothing here to tell gamers where a defender is. A completed pass is luck, because of both the view and the throwing mechanic. A power meter indicates how hard the throw will be, making it an extra step to complete before the linemen charge in.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out this ruins the ground game too. The same problem, unseen defenders just off screen, make long runs an impossibility, and the loose tackling means the DBs don't even need to be close to make a play. Even with only eight players on each side, the game feels crowded, and the field too squished. This is hardly a regulation surface, especially with cartoonish, bright, and overly colorful graphics.
Kicking is frustrating,
not because of how it's done, but because it switches to a viewpoint behind the play. If
the entire game used this view, most of these problems would be forgiven. It could succeed
quite nicely as an introduction to the sport for a young child. The play selection is
simple, easy to understand, and fast. The brief cinematics offer break-ups of the
otherwise cheap graphics engine, and some of the lesser simulation aspects would probably
win over a kid.Unfortunately, Football Fury doesn't offer the overall ease of play necessary. On field play moves too quickly, and linemen are relentless in their pursuits. This is hardly the football game to be wasting time with on the SNES, and even if the Madden series wasn't a massive success, there are always the three Tecmo Bowl options. Sammy's game misses on every level.
