Football season is fast approaching, so it’s time to get out your jerseys, your footballs, leashes, water bowls, chew bones, flea spray, and pooper scoopers. Wait…what? Yup, it’s time for Jerry Rice and Nitus’ Dog Football for Nintendo Wii. Hey wait a minute. Dog Football? Really? Dog Football?!? Yup, it’s a family oriented football game featuring canine athletes.

Even though each team in the game consists mostly of barking and wagging players, the basic rules of football are the same. You can play a single game or do a whole season, as well as practice the rules and gameplay and customize your team. The only human on the team is the quarterback, who passes and kicks the ball. Choose from a selection of silly characters as your human. The rest of the players are dogs, and you can select a couple of breeds for your team.

On offense, you’ll select from a few simple run or pass plays by pointing at them with the Wii remote. Flick the Wii remote up to receive the ball, and fling it back down to pass the ball to a dog teammate ready to play. Then you must point the remote at the screen to guide your dog down the field and try and get a ‘fur-st down.’

The fields in the game are definitely more imaginative and fantasy oriented, and includes locations like a rock n roll concert stage, beach, snowfield, and even outer space! Each field has various items your dogs can run and jump over, and if you can guide your dog through these obstacles, you’ll earn ARF points. These points are added to your score when you make a touchdown.

Defense isn’t quite as much fun as offense. You still use the remote to guide your dog down the field, and shake it to tackle the other team. One handy feature in both offense and defense is the Auto Dog mode. By holding down A, your dogs will automatically run the field and tackle, which is useful when things get hectic and confusing. Up to four can play at the same time, too.

By playing and winning games in single play and full season, you’ll unlock all sorts of goodies. New dog breeds, fields, human player quarterbacks, and outfits to dress your dogs in. Plus you’ll earn doggy dollars to spend on all these things, as well as dog treats to give your team-mutts a boost out on the field.

The main problem with this game is the play control. To start a play you’ll need to flick the remote up and down, but then you’ll have to immediately point it at the screen after that to guide your dog down the field, and it can get a bit disorienting for a couple of seconds. And if you don’t release the A button at the right time when throwing the ball, you’ll end up dropping it, which happens a little too often. And other moves, like shaking the remote to tackle, just don’t work well at all, which is why Auto Dog is a godsend. But if you want a very different kind of football game that the whole family can play, you can’t get much more unusual and creative than Dog Football.

Kid Factor:

Reading skill is helpful for the text instructions, but there are some spoken voices and picture cues here and there, too. Younger players might get frustrated at the controls and difficulty of the later opposing teams. Really the best thing about this game is it’s a great way to teach youngsters the basic rules of football, as they explain things very well in the tutorials. So parents can use this game to help their kids understand football better, and maybe they’ll have more fun watching games with you! Jerry Rice and Nitus’ Dog Football is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews