NFL Kicker 13

NFL KICKER 13

NFL Kicker 13 is a prototypical iPhone game made by Full Fat. It has several different modes, coins that can be collected throughout the game and used for purchases and the controls all lie in the fingertips of the player as they flick the ball across the screen. 

The player is a kicker in the NFL and must kick as many field goals as possible in order to post the highest score. NFL Kicker 13 is actually a licensed game meaning that they are allowed to use the name NFL as well as all the names and uniforms of the 32 NFL teams, something that is rare within the sport video games (For example NFL 2K did not get a license and were not allowed to reference anything that had relation to the NFL, despite being a American football game). Players can chose any number and any team for which they want to play, this is purely an aesthetic choice and the game is not affected by the player’s choice.   

There are three different modes to choose from, each new level is unlocked by reaching a new level. In The Zone is the first mode; you have three lives to score as many points as possible. The points are measured by distance and accuracy (the field goal posts are divided into various zones, gold being the best). As the game continues the distances increases and the accuracy zones become smaller. The wind increases making it more and more difficult to kick with great accuracy.

Coffin Corner puts you in the posistion of Punter and it’s your objective to kick the ball as close to the 1-yard line without hitting the end zone. The same mechanics apply as In The Zone, it because increasingly more difficult the more time passes and the more successful you are.

Time Attack is like In The Zone just with time instead. If you kick the gold-zone first you are awarded extra time, so essentially it’s a sort of Arcade mode. The better you perform the longer you can play.

After playing through a game you are awarded with credits that you can use to buy new equipment, such as alternate uniforms, and being able to upgrade your stadium. By upgrading your stadium you increases the amount of credits that you get after each game. You can also buy boosts to use during a game such as Phoenix, allowing one extra life after using all three, or Slow-mo that slows down the time. Despite these attempts at trying to hook the player they don’t work well. The boosts are overpriced and it takes a long time to save up for one. The stadium upgrades don’t really do anything other than give you more credits that you can’t really use for anything. It costs 15,000 credits to buy an alternate uniform, you get maybe about 200 credits per game, you do the math.

Even though there are several different modes they just aren’t different enough. After playing each mode a couple of times you are already bored, In The Zone and Time Attack are basically the same mode and Coffin Corner just isn’t that interesting.

Kicking is perhaps the least interesting part of an NFL game and it doesn’t translate well into mobile app games. The game is rather redundant and looks like most other “flick” games out on the Android Market and the App Store. Implementing credits but not having a good solution for how to handle them is bad design. Hopefully Full Fat will come with an update to the game with more modes and some things to spend your credits on. Until then I would recommoned picking up a version of Madden 12 if you are a football fan.