THQ's NFL Football 2005 seems a solid title that boasts full 11-on-11 play and complete starting rosters for all 32 NFL teams. When you delve deeper into THQ's game, however, its flaws become pretty clear. Largely, bad artificial intelligence and general playability issues are what keep Football 2005 shy of a first down.
THQ has clearly made some sacrifices to accommodate full 11-player formations. The game's player sprites don't look so sharp, and it's difficult to differentiate between jersey colors, perhaps because NFL Football 2005 has been restricted to a color palette that's too narrow. Furthermore, THQ's slow-moving, Lilliputian players look incredibly cramped on the Motorola V600's decent-sized display. In most passing plays, your receivers don't even fit onscreen. They're instead represented by asterisk, zero, or pound numerals that correspond to the buttons you'll need to push to throw to one of your men. Without visual confirmation, it's very difficult to gauge at what point your receivers are in their routes or how heavily they're guarded. The latter concern proves not to matter all that much, however. A receiver guarded by only one defensive back is just as likely to have the ball snatched from his indiscernible hands as a guy who's triple-teamed. Jamdat's recent football game showed indicators under players to suggest their eligibility for receptions. This proved to be an excellent design choice, given screen-size and control restrictions inherent to the mobile platform. Unfortunately, THQ's game lacks an equivalent solution, and it suffers for it. Even worse, the AI-controlled players will occasionally fail to run at you when you're making a kickoff reception. Other times, they'll nail you before you reach your own twenty-yard line.
THQ's NFL Football 2005 seems like it was made with the noble goal of faithfully re-creating a console football experience on mobile. However, the constraits of the mobile platform really weren't taken into heavy consideration. For example, a mobile user who becomes momentarily distracted by a real-world need shouldn't be punished with a delay-of-game penalty. Similarly, it's a mistake to make casual, mobile users scroll through a jumble of unrelated plays. Even console titles sort plays by formation. Fortunately, Football 2005 lets you enable a "coach's pick" option, which is similar to the Madden's pick feature in EA's long-running console series. This scales the complexity back several notches, which is great for casual or distracted players.
Indeed, there's a lot that Football 2005 does right. You can download updated player rosters via an easy-to-find WAP link. These rosters include rudimentary statistics for all the starters in the NFL. One can only assume that these stats are based on the real-life performances of these players in the current NFL season. The speed statistic definitely has the most noticeable impact on gameplay, since pressing the turbo button is effective to different degrees depending on which player you're controlling. The turbo button is difficult to use, though, regardless of who's getting the extra boost. Double-tapping in any given direction yields the same effect as the dedicated turbo button, but it is also slightly unreliable. Proper collision detection and first-down readings are paramount in any football title. They are doubly important in Football 2005, which does not include penalties of any sort. Fortunately, these features work pretty well.
Football 2005's sound is decent, but it's not overwhelming. You're not going to get much more than a few obligatory, bone-crushing sounds, but such is the state of auditory feedback on mobile.
Finally, the game's addition of a hotswapping two-player mode is a cool feature, even if it goes underused. In this mode, players take turns on offense competing against the game's AI. While this is an extremely limiting way to play football, it's better than nothing.
Had THQ's NFL Football 2005 come out even a half a year earlier, we might be singing a different tune. But with other, better football games already on the market, it's difficult to recommend NFL Football 2005.
