![]() ![]() While I can see how some people might be turned off by them, I love Legend Bowl’s pixellated graphics. Once you complete your first season you can then embroil yourself in the off-season’s wheeling and dealing, as well as taking part in the draft, allowing you to build out your team as you see fit. There’s some lovely touches here, starting with the weekly newspaper that tells you some of the league’s biggest stories, through to upgrading your facilities to bring in more money or improve your player’s stats. Legend Bowl features all of the key modes you need, and at the heart of it is the Franchise mode, an ongoing American Football experience that sees you taking complete control of your team’s management as well as how they play on the field. The only thing missing right now is a create your logo option, though there are a range of options to pick from as it stands. Despite the blocky visuals, you’ll be surprised at just how much personality and precision you can bring to your creations, and I can see people spending a lot of time crafting their teams. It’s not just the names you get to tinker with either, with a full suite of customisation options to give your pixelated players the perfect appearance. Equally, you can have teams made up of Hollywood starlets, your Auntie Janet or your best friend Timmy – whatever floats your boat. They’re all so well done that I didn’t find myself missing the official NFL teams at all.Ĭustomisation is at the heart of Legend Bowl, as you can add Josh Allen, Cooper Kupp or Aaron Donald into each team’s roster for yourself. There’s some cool little nods for NFL history buffs too, with the San Francisco Miners staking a claim for the 49ers, who are themselves named for the 1849 gold-rush prospectors that flooded the West Coast region. However, the team names have definitely taken a heap of inspiration from the real-life teams that are currently in the league, from the Miami Sharks – they might also be fans of Any Given Sunday – through to the New England Minutemen. Legend Bowl doesn’t have the luxury of the official NFL license, so you won’t be seeing any Kansas City Chiefs or Buffalo Bills here (unless you play on PC where you can find a full NFL mod). Once you’ve mastered the controls, there’s a real satisfaction to turning in a 20-yard run or completing a perfectly timed pass, and it can be nail-biting hoping that the defenders aren’t going to catch your running back as he heads towards the The difficulty is initially much higher than you’ll find in Madden, though that could be due to unlearning years of learned behaviours from EA’s franchise. Throwing a Hail Mary is just as desperate here as it is in real life, and you have to balance your passing game and running game in order to succeed. Legend Bowl’s simplistic visuals lull you into a fall sense of security, as you expect a more arcade-orientated experience, but quickly find that it’s much closer to a sim experience, at least in terms of difficulty. At first, that might mean you’re fumbling a little with the controls, but once you’re into it, Legend Bowl is a proper game of football. You can run and tackle, sure, but I wasn’t fully expecting to be able to spin, juke, hurdle and stiff arm as well. That’s a decent starting point for any sports title, but here you’re getting a reassuringly fully-featured rendition of the game, starting from the extensive playbook through to a complete array of play controls. ![]() Legend Bowl plays a good game of American Football. Legend Bowl will look familiar to anyone that played 8-Bit Tecmo Bowl or early Madden games, bringing a lovingly pixelated version of America’s favourite sport back to our screens, but with a smorgasbord of modern features included. While EA’s top-tier franchise gets a lot right, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room for improvement, and indie developers have turned to the football greats of yesteryear for inspiration to help fill that nostalgic niche. If you want to play a digital game of American Football, your choices in 2023 are generally between this year’s Madden and last year’s Madden.
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