Legend Bowl Review

thesixthaxis.com:

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. 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. 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.

Legend Bowl plays a good game of American Football. 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. You can run and tackle, sure, but I wasn’t fully expecting to be able to spin, juke, hurdle and stiff arm as well. 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.

The toughest thing to get right is the passing. Passing is controlled by a power meter, with a tap resulting in a lob, a longer push the ‘standard’ throw and longer still to wind up for a bullet pass. Hold on too long and the meter will rebound from the end of the gauge, drastically reducing your accuracy. The thing about passing in Legend Bowl is that sometimes it seems to go awry through no true fault of your own, and the number of times I attempted a throw to see it sail far, far over my receiver’s head started to feel deliberately vindictive. However, this is a game where practice pays off.

Legend Bowl’s simplistic visuals