VIDEO GAME REVIEW 'NFL Street' offers attitude in a sanitized sort of way

The game has a hip-but-hokey quality.
By MIKE ANTONUCCI
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"NFL Street" is a much-hyped new video game that ought to be sold in a laboratory jar.
If this game turns out to be a big hit, it should be studied by social scientists, business schools, musicians and scriptwriters. It's from the sports-game impresarios at Electronic Arts, and it's hip but lame. It's slick but hokey. It's intense but flimsy.
Maybe it's perfect, at least from a marketing standpoint.
It reached stores this week at a good time, with the NFL playoffs in high gear, but the biggest football video games, including EA's "Madden NFL 2004," are months old. "NFL Street" is a fresh alternative: seven-man teams of NFL players, with a beach or wall-lined lawn as a field, in no-helmet games that push you to be "stylin"' as well as strategic. Forget the Hail Mary -- in "NFL Street" you worship the behind-the-back pass.
Exaggerated
There's nothing radical in this approach. It's the arcade side of gaming: exaggerated, cartoonish action instead of realistic simulations. There's little that's new, and nothing all that outlandish.
It's sanitized attitude, even though the game celebrates trash talking. It's pseudo-extreme. It's cool, but cool that meshes with an "everyone" age rating, not to mention the approval of the image-conscious NFL.
And maybe that's a smart thing and a good thing, at least in terms of potential sales. Is it a fun thing? In large portions, yes, but there's no getting around how un-edgy the manufactured edginess is.
The taunting? Well, it's tame enough to imagine hearing it from your mother. Everything is along the lines of, "Is that all you've got?" or "It's not your ball, it's my ball."
This is timidity that partly reflects the influence of the NFL, which pressured another game publisher, Midway, to tone down the hit 'em and hit 'em again motif of its "NFL Blitz" series.
Widest audience
The key factor, though, is probably EA's desire to make the game acceptable to the widest possible audience.
EA senior product manager Tom Goedde says there has been a clamor from gamers for something like "NFL Street" ever since the company launched its playground-extreme "NBA Street" series in 2001. But he also notes that "NFL Street" is an attempt to cultivate two elusive types of game players: young people who might find the classic, intricate "Madden" simulations too stodgy and anyone looking for a simpler game experience.
Goedde rejects the notion that the game's look and style is just camouflage for a milquetoast persona.
"It doesn't have to be over-the-top trash talking, and it doesn't have to be walls crumbling as you hit them," Goedde says. "The action on the field translates to the action on the couch, where you're talking at the person you're playing against."
If he's right, the game could be huge. It has the requisite hip-hop soundtrack, which includes music from DJ Kay Slay, the X-ecutioners, Lil' Flip and Killer Mike. It has a great atmosphere even if you never get off the beach and lawn, but other "fields" include a fenced-in rooftop in Atlanta and a corner lot in the Bronx.
Challenges
It's also loaded with strategic challenges, from the way you select seven players for a game to how you use the softer or firmer footing on different parts of the beach. It's not as complex as "Madden," but it certainly has a learning curve. And the PlayStation2 version offers online competition.
We'll know a little more about U.S. culture when those elusive game fans render their judgment on "NFL Street." If they buy in -- if they don't think it's a fraud -- we'll know what passes for cool when a football game has the right marketing, right music and couch-pleasing in-your-face animations.
X"NFL Street," for PlayStation 2, XBox and Game Cube, is rated E for everyone.