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 lull you into a fall sense of security, as you expect a more arcade-orientated experience, but quickly find that it’s much closer to a sim experience, at least in terms of difficulty. Throwing a Hail Mary is just as desperate here as it is in real life, and you have to balance your passing game and running game in order to succeed. The difficulty is initially much higher than you’ll find in Madden, though that could be due to unlearning years of learned behaviours from EA’s franchise. Once you’ve mastered the controls, there’s a real satisfaction to turning in a 20-yard run or completing a perfectly timed pass, and it can be nail-biting hoping that the defenders aren’t going to catch your running back as he heads towards the
Legend Bowl doesn’t have the luxury of the official NFL license, so you won’t be seeing any Kansas City Chiefs or Buffalo Bills here (unless you play on PC where you can find a full NFL mod). However, the team names have definitely taken a heap of inspiration from the real-life teams that are currently in the league, from the Miami Sharks – they might also be fans of Any Given Sunday – through to the New England Minutemen. There’s some cool little nods for NFL history buffs too, with the San Francisco Miners staking a claim for the 49ers, who are themselves named for the 1849 gold-rush prospectors that flooded the West Coast region. They’re all so well done that I didn’t find myself missing the official NFL teams at all.
Customisation is at the heart of Legend Bowl, as you can add Josh Allen, Cooper Kupp or Aaron Donald into each team’s roster for yourself. Equally, you can have teams made up of Hollywood starlets, your Auntie Janet or your best friend Timmy – whatever floats your boat. It’s not just the names you get to tinker with either, with a full suite of customisation options to give your pixelated players the perfect appearance. Despite the blocky visuals, you’ll be surprised at just how much personality and precision you can bring to your creations, and I can see people spending a lot of time crafting their teams. The only thing missing right now is a create your logo option, though there are a range of options to pick from as it stands.
Legend Bowl features all of the key modes you need, and at the heart of it is the Franchise mode, an ongoing American Football experience that sees you taking complete control of your team’s management as well as how they play on the field. There’s some lovely touches here, starting with the weekly newspaper that tells you some of the league’s biggest stories, through to upgrading your facilities to bring in more money or improve your player’s stats. Once you complete your first season you can then embroil yourself in the off-season’s wheeling and dealing, as well as taking part in the draft, allowing you to build out your team as you see fit.
While I can see how some people might be turned off by them, I love Legend Bowl’s pixellated graphics. They’re nostalgic and coherent, and they allow you to concentrate on the on-field action while still having heaps of character. The audio also adds to the retro experience, with era-accurate chip tunes and digitised sound bites bringing everything to life in a really fun way. Your QB shouting “Omaha, Omaha”, a safety telling a receiver not to come their way again, and the players berating the defence are all great little touches that elevate the experience.
I loved last year’s Retro Bowl, and while Legend Bowl shares many of the same concepts and ideas, it’s a game that feels utterly different. Legend Bowl is more serious and more sim-focussed, but retains that same sense of fun and character that you won’t find in most modern sports titles.
