Deep down, I love arcade-style sports games. There are many reasons for that. Most of all, I like them because of their quick matches and focus on action. With the start of the 2024 NFL season, I saw a new game called Retro Bowl 25 launched on Apple Arcade. Retro Bowl is a series that’s been around for a few years, but this is my first experience with it. This is their first year with an officially licensed NFL game. While I love aspects of this game, there are some frustrating points.
Your Quest for Coaching Glory
Retro Bowl only has one real mode, a season/dynasty mode. Here you create your coach and try to develop them into a legend. You’re given the option of selecting your favorite team and your starting team. Yes, you can have both be the same, but the game encourages you to start with a different team. They want you to develop as a coach before leading the team you aspire to manage. I started by coaching the LA Chargers with the dream of coaching the Seattle Seahawks.
After picking your team, you can either begin with that team’s roster or by selecting your own. If you go with the latter, you have 150 million to spend. I focused on offense, selecting Matthew Stafford, Travis Kelce, and Raheem Mostert. For the rest of my money, I let the game fill out it out for me. Because of that, I had a solid 5-star offense, but only a 3-star defense.
The named players in this game have star ratings. This is why my offense was so high while my defense was middle of the pack. Based on what I could do with my roster, you can have a max of 10 “star” players regardless of their rating. Meanwhile, no-name characters will out the rest of your roster.
Offense is the only game in town
While you can pick defense players for your squad, you play zero defense. When you’re not controlling the ball, the game simulates the defense. During this time, you do have notifications letting you know what is happening. Other than the offense, you do get to perform special teams actions such as kick and punt returns.
The offense is also limited. You don’t pick the plays, leaving you only to select an audible pre-snap. Every play formation can be a run or pass play. If you select the runningback pre-snap, it will execute a run play. If you want to pass the ball, then you pull the QB backward on the screen so they snap the ball and start the play.
Running the ball is easy and a lot of fun. On my team, Raheem Mostert was dominating the field, and the key to my team’s 11-6 record. He was unstoppable at times and scored most of my team’s points. I don’t know if this is a glitch with Mostert or if the running game is broken, but it was the best way for me to win matches.
Damn it, Stafford.
While the running game was fun, I can’t say the same for the passing. If you jump into this game, I strongly recommend playing the tutorial. I didn’t and I quickly found out how difficult passing is in this game.
To throw the ball, you don’t point your QB in the direction you want to throw and then tap a receiver. Instead, the QB is like a slingshot. You pull on the screen behind him, which creates a throwing arc. The longer the arc, seemingly the farther he’ll throw. You don’t target a player, but you aim for the area you want the ball to go to and hope that a player is in the area.
I was never able to find a rhythm with the passing. The timing is small, so you have to hope for the best. Also, I noticed that the defense was very smart and regularly had the advantage. There were many games where the defensive safety could jump and intercept a pass in the middle of a route. There is no easy way to tell the height of the ball, leading to easy interceptions.
Pray the defense has a good game
Because you don’t control the defense, you have to hope the simulation gods are in your favor. Since my team was only a 3-star defense, I was regularly giving up points. Most of my losses were because I was giving up the ball too easily on throws. The gave the computer great field position. Then, when you couple that with a weak defense, then I would trail by 2 TDs and could not mount a comeback.
In my first season, I lost in the Wild Card round because of my defense. I was leading by multiple scores late into the fourth quarter. The computer proceeded to score a TD and get the two-point conversion to bring the score down to 28-26. They would recover the onside kick and follow that up with a field goal with no time left on the clock and win 29-28. There was nothing I could do but watch in shock.
What that did was make me want to improve my defense on the offseason. After making some decisions on my offense, I fired my DC and hired the best one I could afford. Even with a better one, I could only improve my defense by half a star, so I still have a lot of work to do in season two. While I’m improving my team, I know the AI is going to make other teams better as well.
Still, I had fun
I managed to run through an entire season in about two hours. Part of that time was also spent building a second team so I could play the tutorial. As an arcade game, Retro Bowl 25 is an easy recommendation even with the frustrations I had. You can play a game in a couple of minutes. Or, you can lose track of time and play for a couple of hours. If this becomes an annual release, I hope next year’s game is even better.
