A mix this crazy just has to work.
Japan. American football. They go together sort of like cheddar cheese and ice cream. And yet somehow a Japanese comic book attempts to mix the two. The result is Eyeshield 21, about a young player named Sena who somehow joins a Japanese school’s football club, or something like it. The comic has now been adapted to video game form for the Nintendo DS.
To be honest, this is my first import review. The Japanese I know couldn’t fill the label on this game card. So the game’s story mode hit me like a safe from the 15th story. I could not make hide nor hair of just what is going on, but I can summarize as far as I have reached in the story mode:
1)Boy goes to school.
2)Boy gets picked on by some bullies.
3)A blond elf-vampire stalks boy.
4)Blond elf-vampire views boy evading bullies.
5)Blond elf-vampire is impressed by boy’s quickness and kidnaps him.
6)Football enters the equation.
I apologize for my lack of understanding. My analysis is mainly based on the images I have seen up to Chapter 2 in the story, where I gave up in the face of quite a lot of Japanese text. Basically, the story mode presents you with challenges like running around the school in a certain time, tackling a blocking sled, and that kind of stuff. I’m sure the story mode follows the comic book it is based on to a "T".
The story isn’t the only mode of the game. The meat of what I played was in the Exhibition mode, where you choose a team and play against another. This is where the game gets really interesting. Usually, when you think of American football, you come across the lovable, lumpy image of John Madden. That thought was in my head as I played the exhibition mode, and boy was I in for a surprise.
The game is played entirely with the touch screen. All of it. Even the exploration parts in story mode are controlled with the touch screen, what little I could understand of them, anyway. Movement in the story mode is made just by placing the stylus on the screen where you want Sena to go. Examination is done just by touching the interesting object. Chatting up the other students involves just touching the interested party. As for the football matches themselves, they are also controlled entirely with the touchscreen, in quite an unusual way.
Kicking off involves a quick diagonal stroke of the touch screen to a power meter. Once the player receives the ball, he runs until he is challenged by the defense on the radar that is always on the top screen. The game structure from here reminds me very much of Wario Ware. Once challenged, the player has a timer in which to act before being automatically tackled. On offense, you touch targets on the screen that represent gaps in the defense’s rush before the timer runs out. On defense, you rub the screen to accelerate tackling. Once the scrimmage is set up, you try to pick plays that will best suit your position. Whether you hand it off to a back or pass the ball, your chances of success are entirely up to you, the receiver. Even if you pick a play the defense is anticipating, you still have a shot at making the play successful if you perform well in the “challenge segments." This makes for a quite interesting take on American football. All the rules are present, and the only part that seems strange is when an opponent's sideline coach or some other person appears and all of a sudden the other team's plays become a little tougher to defeat. Scoring is simply a matter of reaching the endzone on the map. There is no real “field" per se. Field goals are executed in the same fashion as kickoffs.
As far as graphics go, the models are a bit impressive. They don’t look breathtaking, but they are very well done, and everything runs at 60 frames-per-second with very few hiccups. The music is of the typically catchy, Japanese cartoon variety. It’s almost like muzak, except it isn’t grating and annoying. As far as the game modes, there are only three: the aforementioned text-filled story mode, the exhibition mode, and some kind of dictionary/player profile/story progress database. The amount of teams is rather small, but this doesn’t pose as much of a problem as it would for a game like Madden, as these teams have the benefit of being fictional.
As far as my recommendation goes, if you are a fan of the comic book and know Japanese back and forth, by all means, import me hearty. The Madden Nation would probably balk at such a game, and rightly so, as it is nothing like Madden at all. As for you regular players, I don’t think this game is as import-friendly as a game like Ouendan, which doesn’t have much in the way of important text. However, if you crave something truly unique, you can’t go wrong with Eyeshield 21, because if this game is anything, it is unique. It's available at Lik-Sang.
