I had put
off playing this one for about a month simply because I couldn’t face the fact
it wasn’t really doable in one sitting. I don’t even know why. I also couldn’t
face relearning how to play American Football, but thankfully the game wasn’t
too difficult to get through and now I don’t have another American Football
game in my backlog. And it’s going to stay that way.
Rookie Rush is a much-improved version
of Backyard Football 10 with multiple
modes with which to have lots of fun in. The general gameplay is improved too
but it still suffers from borderline childish commentary, though that has also
made a significant improvement since the last game. That’s not saying much though
as the commentary from the last game was more at home in kindergarten.
In terms of
gameplay, the premise is the same. You select your attacking and defensive
plays, cross your fingers and hope for the best. I had several instances where
my quarterback decided to just throw the ball out of play rather than towards
my running back who had made a decent run into the middle of the pitch. There
seems to be no rhyme or reason to this, just every now and then, the RNG roll
decides it’s time for a bad quarterback through.
This was
also the same on defence. You can time your tackles as much as you like,
sometimes you will make the tackle, other times you won’t. To be fair, I did
benefit from this almost as much as I lost out so it does go both ways.
In terms of
story, bizarrely there is a story mode where you go around beating teams and
signing their best players on to your team. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but
at the end you win the cup game at the fun fair so everyone is happy.
Musically,
it was so annoying that I still couldn’t get the terrible music out of my head
after I’d finished the game. At least the commentary was more forgettable,
though the main, repetitive annoying bit that happened a lot was when the
commentator says, ‘Hey, I was watching that’ when you skip the replays. And
there are lots of replays and you’ll want to skip them all.
Achievements – 1,000 Points – 45
Achievements
The big put
off for me was the five to six hours it takes to get through the game (coming
from the guy that put 50 hours into FIFA
12…). However, once I got past it, it wasn’t so bad as the games were not
total episodes of frustration.
There are
two main categories of achievement here – ones earned from specific actions in
matches and ones earned for winning matches. Despite my ineptitude and lack of
understanding of American Football, I was able to get all bar one of the
in-match achievements, the last one of these was for scoring a Safety, which
seems like an impossibility without a second controller. This involves making a
tackle in your opponent’s end zone. Other luck-based ones include collecting a
fumble and making an interception but thankfully these came quite easily.
That just
leaves completing the modes. There is Story Mode, Season Mode and Tournament.
Story mode holds the most achievements as you get one for each player you
recruit into your team and then another for finishing it. Season mode requires
you to win 5 games in a row, make the playoffs and win. Tournament mode is
technically the most time consuming. There are six tournaments you need to win
and you also need to play in a custom tournament.
Winning the
tournaments can be sped up by simulating the matches but this is a massive
ballache because you will lose matches that, on paper, you should win. It’s
highly recommended that this is done after completing story mode and unlocking
some of the better teams in the game. Simulating is still miles quicker than
actually playing the tournaments so it’s just a case of crossing your fingers
and keeping at it.
Downloadable Content – N/A
While Rookie Rush was a relatively quick and
easy completion, and the most enjoyable American Football game I’ve played, I’m
happy to be done with the genre. It was a bit of a drag towards the end and
even setting the time to one minute quarters, games just seemed to drag on and
on.
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