Let me start right off by saying that I am NOT a sports fan. Not in real life, and definitely not in the gaming world. I don’t play real sports, I don't watch real sports, and usually I stay away from any sports related games. Notice the 'usually'. It's always nice when a game comes along that makes me take another look at something I don't have much interest in. The NFL Blitz games, from Midway, have done just that. I first learned of 'Blitz' when the original NFL Blitz was released on the Playstation console. A friend of mine told me I HAD to try it, even though he knew I wouldn’t ordinarily have any interest in a football game. I didn’t pursue trying it myself and so it came down to being FORCED to play it the next time I went over to his house. You know, it's nice to have pushy friends sometimes. NFL Blitz turned out to be a lot more fun and entertaining than I had expected. You see, I did not know that this was not your typical type of stats and realism based football game that I have seen produced since the early days of video games. NFL Blitz was surprisingly different. It takes a new over-the-top action oriented approach to football, and even changes some of the main rules of the game in the process. Now, a year later, Midway again offers us enjoyable hard-hitting football mayhem with the release of NFL Blitz 2000.

Fans of the first game will be able to get right to playing NFL Blitz 2000 as the game's menus and play selections are set up as they were in the original game. Newcomers won't have much difficulty either, as all the options and choices during gameplay are straightforward and easy to understand. Plus, if you need a little help during the initial plays of the game, there are helpful hints displayed to guide you to get right into the action. It's nice to be able to load up a sports based game and be playing in less than a minute. The initial menus are short and sweet and the play selection is just a matter of moving your cursor and pressing the button. Everything about NFL Blitz 2000 is geared towards getting you right into the meat of the game, with very little time spent on wasted time between plays of at the ends of periods. Even the kickoffs are treated in a rather rapid manner, with the player always being thrown right into the action at the moment the ball is being received. Between plays, there's barely enough time to perform a gruesome bone cracking late hit before you're back at the play menu gearing up for another go. Everything about the game is fast-paced, and keeps the action flowing.

The graphics are done well again just as they were in the original NFL Blitz. There doesn’t seem to be any staggering improvements at all in the graphics department. Obviously now that players can become 'on fire' after completing some nice moves we are often treated to some 'fire' graphics, but things are looking pretty much the way they were, and there's nothing wrong with that... unless you, as I did, start to experience a nagging Deja Vu type feeling as you play Blitz 2000... You see... Aside from giving us a few small enhancements and the addition of a 4-player mode, NFL Blitz 2000 doesn’t seem to be all that different than it's predecessor. Not in the graphics department. Not in the rules. Not in the gameplay. Not in much at all. There seems to just be a ton of the same stuff happening again this time around. Maybe I don’t understand how sequels to sports games are supposed to be. As I have stated, I don’t have much experience with this genre of games but I do know that I expected NFL Blitz to somehow blow me away or at least give me some new things to keep me interested. Perhaps this is the way its supposed to be... Perhaps small things are supposed to be modified here and there when it's possible and some stats are supposed to be updated but I'm not to expect a whole new type of game. I guess I can live with that but I then can't see much reason to go out and buy this game if I already have had the original. 4-Player IS fun... but, what's the chance of getting four people together to play it anyway? Could that be worth the price? I just don't know. I don't exactly know what they could have done to vastly improve this game to make it more approachable to those that are new to it, as well as those that may know the original inside and out.

If you don't already have the original NFL Blitz and think you might like some great action-oriented football fun, then by all means check out NFL Blitz 2000. The game is made very well. It's fun in both the one player and multiplay modes. The play selection and graphics and twisted football rules are excellent. Seeing a helmet ripped off during a tackle still makes me smile. Seeing a helmet ripped off during a gruesome extremely late hit makes me smile even more! If you already have NFL Blitz or have played it into the ground somewhere then you may not need what Blitz 2000 has to offer. It's much of the same and maybe not enough to keep your interest. Maybe you and three other people should split the cost of NFL Blitz 2000 and spend some time in the 4-Player game... That way you can all have fun with it, and no one gets burned paying full price for a lot of what they had before. If you DON'T have any friends.. well then take your game money and buy one, even for a night. They're kind of fun and you may even laugh and stuff.

NFL Blitz 2K has arrived, but is it better than the original? Not really. I was eager to play NFL Blitz 2K because of the amount of fun I had playing the first NFL Blitz. My friends, who had the console version of the game, had told me it wasn't that much of a change over the original NFL Blitz. They were indeed right and it really isn't that much of a change over the original NFL Blitz on PC either.

The graphics in NFL Blitz 2K aren't that impressive and are pretty much similar to the original Blitz, but they aren't exact. There really aren't that many variations of player skins in the game, but there are a few variations of player models. There are "Strong Build" type player models and then you have your good old fat guy player models. There are also more stadiums in NFL Blitz 2K than in the original Blitz and pain animations. Sometimes when a player gets tackled, the model will walk around and say "I think my finger is broken", it's sorta funny. NFL Blitz 2K seems to run a lot slower than the original Blitz, even though the graphics aren't much different. I noticed the game goes in slow motion when disabling it to skip frames and my system is a 433 with a Voodoo 1. Sure a Voodoo 1 is old, but a 433 should be more than enough to handle graphics like that.

The music is unchanged in NFL Blitz 2K, it's the exact same as it was in NFL Blitz. During the statistics screen you will hear the same music as you did in NFL Blitz and I don't think there is any more music besides that. Players now do more taunting when tackling a player and there are some new pain sounds as well. I noticed in the game that when you tackle a fat guy with a pretty thin player, that he won’t be able to take him down, the player gets dragged along the back of the fat player which is pretty cool but annoying at times.

NFL Blitz 2K is pretty much the same as the original NFL Blitz, I wouldn't suggest buying it unless you've never played Blitz before. It is quite an enjoyable game to play because it's not a football simulation, but rather an arcade game. There are very few controls in the game which makes it easy to play as well. Even if you’re not a football fan, you should still enjoy a game like this. It’s bone breaking fun at it’s best.