becoming increasingly NFL brained. the sell here is Midway's tender love of turbo mixes with Blitz The League's grisly lust for gore mixes with generic dark fantasy at the 50 yard line--its an alluring alchemy for not real adolescents (surprised if anyone born after janet jackson's super bowl titty has any fondness for NFL Blitz '00) but adolescents in spirit like me. like alot of sports fans of a darker complexion I've developed an understanding that I might be challenged to a game of Madden (or really 2K) wherever & whenever, and so have come to an acceptance of the video game mega franchises for what it is and learned to enjoy it, but there's still a burn to see my favorite actually-kinda-mid QBs shake off 3 tackles in the pocket and then throw a 40 yard dart that the sim games can't give. MFL understands my wants, and provides me the experience of a juiced Matt Ryan (personified here as a skeleton named Ratty Ice) scrambling for an unheard of 15 yards and throwing 40 yard lasers as I desired--but then, it started asking questions that made me deeply uncomfortable. "If you gave Cooper Kupp steroids mid play, how many yards do you think he would get after the catch?" "Let's say Adrian Peterson lit himself on fire after the handoff. He isn't hurt by his own flames. Would the defense still try to tackle him?" "What if Josh Allen had a pump action in his off-hand during his run plays?" "If Trevor Lawrence could literally throw an IED at the opposing cornerbacks every half, would his QBR improve?" The other sell of this game are the "Dirty Plays", normal run option or play action plays that morph into Hanna-Barbera skits after the snap: all the aformentioned questions are scenarios you can find the answer to in here, along with the option to supersize one of your Dline men, jumping the line of scrimmage in an attempt to kill the quarterback within the next 5 seconds, completely Diavolo-ing the last touchdown pass, etc. although imposing at first each dirty play has some form of legitimate counterplay, or at least mitigation, and strategizing around timing and potentiality becomes this game's own unique metagame separating it out from the myriad of other arcade football prospects. And perhaps, most brutally, each player has their own health bar, meaning that taking too many late hits (completely legal btw) or being on the receiving end of a dirty play can actually just kill one of your players, with the only chance of revival being the reward for winning a half-time mini-game. while killing all of the team's opposing QBs is a win condition, and part of this game's market pitch, I've played about 60-70 games and never seen it happen, nor really come close; teams usually have 3 or more QBs on rotation and killing more than 2 requires alot of sacks or a lucky dirty play, and that's assuming a QB doesn't get revived. What I have seen happen though is me instantly killing Aaron Rodgers on the first snap of the game and dominating the ackers from there. if you have any vindications against a signed NFL player this is the time to let it loose.

it's all a good time, and as i plummed deeper into this i found there is a core of being rewarded for playing the rosters of yesteryear the "right way"--running the damn ball with the falcons along with masterminded ref bribe management lead to an easy chip in a season mode, instead of trying to play honest 2008 peyton manning offense with a shit OLine like the 2021 falcons did. still i wasn't able to find a perfect happy medium of difficulty between the relatively somber arcade gameplay and the literal explosives of the series gimmicks for this to be a forever game, in spite of finding the base elements really appealing. turning off stage hazards and lessening the damage a bit was my standard mode of play, but I can't help but feel that more modulation, in spirit of the sim mega franchises, would help here. Being able to adjust or nix the ref bribery metagame, lessening the efficacy of stiff arms, and other under-the-hood tweaks would make this even more of my thing even if the rosters never updated again. there's a thread on the steam forums right now about how easy is too easy and normal is too punishing that I mostly agree with, and the dev rep mentions even more fine-tuning of the difficulty along with a roster update in store,,, which is all well and good but I'd rather have those fine-tuning sliders for myself than have devs try to calibrate for some abstract universal medium. I'm hoping MFL 2 will be a breakthrough in this regard, but for now I don't see this game getting a ring quite yet in spite of its elite talent...that might be for the other bitches