1 our of 5 stars

Every so often, I stumble across a game that I know will probably disappoint me, but I buy it anyway in the hopes it will surprise me with just how competent it actually is. I desperately want the game to be something that will allow my time with it to be fun, but more often than not, I am left with the shattered thoughts of what could have been.

“Axis Football 2015” enters stage left.

“Axis Football 2015” is an American Football game that attempts to be in the vein of Madden, but ends up being more in the vane of complete dumpster fire. It’s like the developers made a prototype to test the game’s systems and just said, “Screw it, put it up on Steam.”

The graphics are PlayStation quality, if not a little worse. The models look flat, and it shows that no effort was put into the artistic design of the game. I was expecting the game to play something like an early 2000’s version of Madden, but it ends up being something worse than any football game I have ever played.

The main draw of the game, other than the fact that it is the only game of its ilk on Steam, is its “innovative” passing system that has the player use the mouse to target where they want to throw the pass. While I like the idea in concept, in practice it is a lot like  playing five finger fillet with a rusty bowie knife you found when you were cleaning the village outhouse; messy, and making you hope you’re up to date on your tetanus shot.

The passing just isn’t fun. Every time I attempt to line up the cursor in an attempt to catch a receiver in stride, I end up either overthrowing the receiver or forcing the receiver stop in order to catch the pass. It is awful, and it would be even more insufferable if it weren’t incredibly forgiving.

It is hard to throw an interception, even on the hardest difficulty setting, and you will more often than not end up throwing an incomplete pass.

However, none of that matters because doing anything other than handing off the football is stupid. I never had a run fail to gain less than 20 yards, and more often than not, I would score a touchdown. There was no way to lose after I figured that out.

The defense wasn’t much different. I took one of the linebackers, blitzed him, and I rarely failed to get a sack. I racked up more than 15 sacks in every game I played.

But all of these problems could be forgiven if the game actually felt good to play. There is no sense of collision at all. Most of the time the animations don’t seem to flow together in the slightest, and it makes everything feel incredibly light.

The fact that anyone thought that this poor excuse for a game was fine to release on Steam for $19.99 is asinine. There is no redeeming quality in this game, and I can’t imagine feeling pride in being the creator of this game, especially after I discovered the game has been released in a very similar quality online in browser for free. It is simply garbage. 1 out of 5 stars, and that’s being generous. Enough said.

Alex Bertsch is the editor in chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected]