Front Page Sports Football Pro 98

Get your kicks here

Sierra Online's latest football simulation is a nice way to live vicariously the life of an NFL coach or player. It's easy to set up and use, offers a huge amount of play and team choices, and rolls in the usual state-of-the-art graphics and sound you've come to expect from such products.

Front Page Sports Pro Football 98 looks and feels very much like the football games you get for video arcade systems like Sega and Nintendo, and operates in much the same way as well. After you've chosen the type of game you want to play (from exhibition to Pro Bowl), you can pick your teams and other parameters, then go to work rocking and socking the opponents (assuming they don't rock and sock you first).

Play by play commentary comes courtesy of CBS announcer Howard David, and you can choose from a multitude of camera angles to play from different views. Player movement is pretty realistic, and you can control 'em via keyboard, joystick or gamepad.

Sierra says the individual players each have their own artificial intelligence, so each player plays slightly differently from any other. We have no idea whether this is true or not, since we're not that up on the NFL, so we'll take them at their word. We had enough trouble just getting the players we controlled to do what we wanted - but that's not an indictment of the game; no, it was our thick fingers on the controller.

A "Career Play" mode lets you manage a player's life (well, on the field anyway) from draft to retirement, possibly even ending up with your protege being named to the Hall of Fame. We didn't get nearly to that point, either. You can play as coach, player, general manager, or commissioner.

Choosing a play is done by pointing and clicking on a selection from the wide variety you're offered. The game has levels of difficulty, too, so your playbook will change accordingly - and you can also edit plays. The playbooks were designed by the NFL's Will Furrer.

The environment (when not in the play choosing screen) is meant to resemble a TV broadcast, and they do a pretty good job of it. We would have liked to see the "Replay" choice come up more quickly after a play, but that's pretty minor.

The manual is full of the information you'll need to know if you don't want to be a cellar dweller, from strategies and rules to what the play abbreviations mean (a particularly handy bit of info if you're not a real football freak).

One thing we didn't like was the 130 meg the "small" installation sucked off of our hard drive. The full installation was over 200 meg! Makes you wonder why they bother with the CD-ROM except for the initial installation.

That said, however, if you like football games, you'll probably enjoy Sierra's Front Page Sports Football Pro 98 and have many happy hours tinkering with your playbook to find just the right combination to ensure your virtual team becomes an NFL dynasty.

And ain't that what it's all about?

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