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AFL Live 2003 Review - PC

Since EA's AFL 99 there has been nothing in the way of AFL games for PC owners, a fact that has been slightly depressing. I would watch the soccer, nhl, nfl, rugby and golf games come and go and think "wheres my AFL game, I love AFL, Australians love AFL, give us an AFL game!!"

Well my dreams have been answered as AFL Live 2003 has hit the PC courtesy of Acclaim.

Developed in Melbourne by local developer IR Gurus, AFL Live 2003 contains every player from the 2002 player roster, all the AFL teams, the 2002 fixture, day and night, wet and dry weather conditions, all the guernseys including both home and away versions where applicable, 6 different, realistic football stadiums including the MCG, Colonial and interstate grounds and commentary by Stephen Quartermain and ex AFL champion, Garry Lyon.

The intro pumps you up and gets you into the mood with a slick cgi movie showing some cool marking and footy action while the teams jumpers switch over the players. It rocks, and really sets the mood. The menus are simple to navigate and set all the options that you want however controller options are restricted to set button or key combinations, you cannot bind a particular move to a button of your choice on your gamepad or keyboard a sign of the games console origins. Thats right, this game is also being released on PS2 and also Xbox but least you can navigate around the game with your mouse though so PC owners havent been totally forgotten about. There are a number of controller configurations you can select from though.. another console feature carried over to the PC version.

Overall the intro is slick, the menus are very well done and very simple to navigate.

Gameplay

I started off a game with the Mighty Tigers versus Collingwood against the PC and straight away the PC gets it out of the middle, down the centre of the ground to Rocca who takes a mark on his own and then goals! all in about 10 seconds! Suffice to say that in my first game i was severely thrashed by about 8 goals and didnt even manage to score apart from one rushed behind. To be honest at this stage i was pretty discouraged, but i set the difficulty to 'easy' changed the quarter time to 4 minutes from 2 had another try and it seemed to make all the difference and within no time i was kicking goals and beating the PC. ,br> After a few games I was beating the PC nearly every game so i bumped the difficulty back to medium and now being totally familiar with the controls, the game presented a much fairer challenge and i would recommend most players do this as it takes a bit to remember what buttons are for what.

In no time I was tackling, pulling down big screamers and kicking goals ... (continued next page)