Backyard Football 10 is the latest release in this popular franchise for kids. It is another title that has earned a spot in the “Xbox360 Family Games” section. It is aimed squarely at little kids who might like football but are too young to really understand what is going on during a game. To say this game holds your hand would be an understatement. As soon as you boot up the game you are brought to the main menu where you are given a variety of options. You have the “Play Now” feature where you go straight to the game with the teams, players and field being picked for you automatically. There is a “Pickup Game” where you can choose your options but even then you aren’t going to get your team. As soon as you pick what team you want to be you then need to pick the players that will be on that team. I picked the San Francisco 49ers and had Tom Brady as my quarterback with Frank Gore as my running back and Reggie Bush on my offensive line alongside Drew Brees. The positions in this game don’t matter at all and you can have each player play whatever position you want. If you want to have Tom Brady on the offensive line or as a running back then you can do that. You can mix and match however you see fit with really no consequence. There are some light statistics where if you pick Tom Brady to be your quarterback his passing rating is higher than others, however, overall, it really doesn’t matter when you are playing the game.

As you go through the game there are these “Power Moves” that you can perform from time to time. If you are on offense and running the ball you can do a move where your player can basically wear a bull’s head and you will charge over anyone in your path. If you are on defense and the other team is running down the field toward the end zone you can use the “Homing Missile” power and you will basically fly toward the runner quickly and tackle them before they can score. I’m sure younger kids will get a kick out of these power moves but I just found them annoying. The game is also fundamentally broken in certain areas. I tried to run the ball up the middle on one play in between two of my blockers and for some reason I couldn’t do it. My player just wouldn’t run through that hole for some strange reason so I had to bounce it outside to try and gain some yards. If you have the game on easy mode you also don’t get a choice on where the quarter back will throw the ball. As soon as you hike the ball and try to throw it the ball will go to the receiver the computer determines is the most open. If you want to be able to decide which player you throw it to it has to be on medium difficulty or higher. I suppose this would be good for really young kids so they can just push a button and it will automatically get thrown, however, there were times where it seemed like there was a receiver that was about to get wide open down the field and yet the play resulted in a five yard pass instead.

There is a season mode where it seems to have the correct NFL schedule as well as a tournament that you can jump into that has eight brackets. You also have the All-Pro game that you can participate in pitting the NFC against the AFC. There are various fields that you can play on with one of them being a winter/holiday theme, one field being in Chinatown, one field being in an apartment complex and things of that nature. There are a couple of fields that are locked in the beginning so there is at least something for someone to work towards when playing. There is no online mode in this title so the replayability is severely limited. Overall, If you are over seven years old you really don’t need to play this game unless you want to get a quick 1,000 points added to your gamerscore. For anyone else just go play the family friendly versions of Madden on the Wii.

Score 5/10

Originally posted on Totally Gaming Network