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NFL Rivals for iPhone

16.09.2011
has made a name for itself on the iOS platform with its Backbreaker Football series, which puts you in the cleats of a gridiron superstar. Whether you're talking about the or its recent , the games are notable for offering console-style graphics, a frenetic player's-eye view, solid accelerometer-based controls, and bone-jarring hits. But you won't find any name or logo of any actual team. Backbreaker uses fictionalized team names like Pioneers, Assassins, and--my personal favorite--Amberjacks.

That changes with NaturalMotion's latest iPhone and iPod touch game, . The developer has struck a deal with the National Football League, allowing you to play a Backbreaker-style game as one of the 32 NFL teams.

(Image Caption: All We See is the Goal Line to Victory: A Kansas City Chief lies in a useless heap--as Chiefs do--while my Chargers running back steams toward the end zone in NFL Rivals.)

But NFL Rivals is about more than just slapping an officially licensed uniform on your virtual player and plastering a metric ton of NFL logos across the screen. The game also adds a social component by letting you rack up points for your favorite NFL team. Say you opt to don the uniform of the San Diego Chargers, as all right-thinking football fans should: Every time you play NFL Rivals, the points you accumulate are added to a global ranking along with all the other scores of your fellow Charger fans. So the more you play, the higher you can push your team up the NFL Rivals scoreboard.

The game features another NFL tie-in as well: The schedule of opponents you face in NFL Rivals matches the actual schedule of the 2011 NFL regular season. The game's Gameday feature matches you up with your team's actual opponent for the week; for instance, this week, if I tap Gameday, my Charger-festooned NFL Rivals player would be taking on some inferior football squadron from the New England area.

The schedule component has a couple notable quirks. If you play ahead, you'll notice that the schedule in NFL Rivals only extends out to Week 10 of the NFL regular season. There's no indication on the game's App Store page that a full season's worth of games will be added in a future update; I'm awaiting word from NaturalMotion to see if such an update is planned. Also, NFL Rivals accounts for the bye week in the NFL schedule by having you play your own team--it's a little confusing to operate a Charger running back trying to elude Charger tacklers, but that's a minor criticism.