To its de-fence, NFL Street 2 does have online multiplayer options for the PS2 and Xbox versions, but we'd imagine the market for this in PAL territories is still fairly limited based purely on such a small extra. Konami may face a pretty stiff task re-selling any online Pro Evo 4 to PS2 owners (with Xbox owners already enjoying Live competition) and that's an indisputably top-notch football game. So who on earth is going to be taken in by the same online side-step for a half-hearted game based on a sport that few people on these shores have any appetite or understanding for? Don't look at us, because we just don't know.
It would be unfair to murk the names of the individuals who worked on this, because, like we say, it's a polished product. It’s the simple fact that this is being dressed up as something ‘new’ that gets our backs up. Fundamentally, it's based on a real sport, so it inherently works well as a game; and the graphics and sound are all sufficiently slick in that pasteurised homogenised EA kind of a way. But even the nice and sanitized looks manage to irk our delicate sensibilities. This is supposed to be street, so a little, if not a lot more grime is called for - we don’t want the glare of Mr. Sheen, we want the sound of breaking bones. Even little tweed-clad Piers Smythe-Patterson-Smythe from Cirencester knows that a few Xzibit hip-hop tunes on the soundtrack won’t make this any more ghetto.
After the generally 'so what' response to the first game, EA Big would have done well to strike it much harder with the Extreme branding iron, especially when it's being released so soon after the first. American football seems to be a potentially brutal kind of sport (at least when the pads and helmets are off) so this could have been a considerably more aggressive game. We're not averse to a bit of fighting and weapon-thrashing in our 'wacky' sports games, and that would have filled a gap here. Flick-knives, crack heads and hoodlums... that might have been interesting. But as it stands, it’s a bit like normal NFL, just on the street. You can’t smack the opposing blocker into a lamp-post and you can’t throw bricks at the quarter back‘s head. Muh!
