The Quarterback Club series has been around for a while and it’s had its downs and ups…well mostly downs. Graphically with the N64, it was superior, but its gameplay was generally lacking, and the early games had single-play-win strategies. Now it’s GameCube time, and Acclaim has brought QBC back to the huddle in the form of NFL QB Club 2002. Unfortunately, it’s not any better than its N64 predecessors.

NFL QB Club’s gameplay could easily be summed up as being clumsy. The running game is the best part of the offense. Following your blocks and breaking through lines is easy if you keep your eyes peeled for openings. Yet, it may be too easy. The passing game is very frustrating. Your outs will run their routes, but getting them to catch the ball is the big problem. If your receiver has a defensive player or two covering him, due to issues with collision detection, they could get pushed out of the way of the ball. Some may call that a program error, but a referee would call that pass interference. Unfortunately the latter doesn’t happen. Say you’re down by 3 points, have the ball, and there’s less than two minutes left on the clock. Obviously you’ll try to throw deep and close to the sidelines. Here’s a problem. For some reason when you catch the ball and get tackled out of bounds, the clock doesn’t always stop. You’ll be forced many times to use your timeouts when the clock should already be stopped. Very frustrating when you are under a 2-minute situation and you need to utilize all of the time remaining on the clock.

Visually QB Club has to be the least impressive of all GameCube games. The in-game graphics are horrid. There’s plenty of slowdown from the second the ball is kicked off until the end of the game. Animations are extremely choppy, but do actually convey what they are supposed to. Framerate bounces from 10 to 15 frames per second, to maybe 20-25 frames per second. If there’s a lot of action going on the screen, expect plenty of stutter. The TV camera-style replays in the game also have plenty of graphical flaws...players disappearing and reappearing, collision issues, even players going through each other. I don’t understand how these types of things can survive the testing process.

The play-by-play announcers are pretty good, but don’t say a whole lot. Due to the fact that there is little talking, synching to what’s happening on the field isn’t too difficult. The crowd is boring, and lackluster. You’d think you’re hometown crowd would be very loud and excited. Just static, dull cheering. Even inside domes it’s not any louder.

One of the exclusive additions to QB Club is the Quarterback Challenge mode. This is a four event series that happens every year around the Pro-Bowl in Hawaii. The different events are Speed and Mobility, Accuracy Event, Long Distance Throw, and Read and Recognition.. It’s an interesting addition, and fun with some friends, but the difficulty of the targeting events may frustrate you. It’s almost like the cannon shooting in Pilotwings for the N64: lots of trial and error. Personally, I didn’t really have the patience for it, and its fun wore off after just a few plays.

I have played most of the QBC titles for the N64, and every year the series falls short. It’s frustrating to me why Quarterback Club keeps coming out, yet each new one sees no major improvement over its predecessors. Obviously this game was rushed, and could have benefited with a couple months of additional work. Acclaim Sports has released their first two titles very prematurely. If Acclaim decides to release another Quarterback Club title on the GameCube, they’ve got a lot of work to do to make it a contender.