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NFL Kicker Impressions From An NFL Punter
A roaring crowd, adrenaline coursing through your veins, the thrill of the... kick? Yes, that’s right, in Full Fat’s app NFL Kicker! (their exclamation point, not mine) you too can experience the pants-wetting thrill of being an NFL kicker. And by "experience the thrill," I mean you get to flick your finger across the screen to make a football move.
As someone who’s actually experienced an NFL game as a punter, Game Informer's executive editor Andrew Reiner felt it would be appropriate if I applied my professional knowledge to review this app, and since my offseason training consists of eating cookies and rolling over to scratch myself, I quickly agreed.
NFL Kicker! is a "flick" type game (which I guess is a genre now) where you try to kick a football through the uprights or punt the ball into the corner of the field, commonly referred to as the "coffin corner," by swiping the screen. Unlike actual kicking, you can influence the ball while it’s in flight by flicking your finger again, which would be really handy to have in real life, but we have to make do with awkward body language and leaning side to side. C’est la vie.
The first thing you’ll see when you start the game is the opportunity to name your player. Unfortunately, since you only get ten letters including spaces, I was unable to name my character Ryan Longwell and had to settle for CHRISKLUWE (believe me, I’m just as disappointed as you). Then you get to choose your skin color, which I’m fairly confident has no bearing on your kicking ability, but hey, it’s an option. Sadly, these are the only visual customization options; I was hoping to put tattoos and wield a penetrator like in Saints Row: The Third, but I guess the NFL frowns on that.
Once you’ve decided on a name, you get to choose a number and team. I went with four and the Vikings to make the simulation as realistic as possible, hoping that if I kicked well I could use it as extra ammunition during my next contract renegotiation.
The title screen gives you a choice of game modes and also has a news ticker from the NFL running across the bottom of the screen, just in case you don’t already have one on your phone. My guess is, if you’re buying NFL Kicker!, you already have an NFL news app. The first game mode is Basic Skills, which teaches you how to play. As the whole of the game revolves around swiping your finger across the screen, Basic Skills is not very long.
The next mode is In The Zone, which requires you to kick field goals. These field goals are spread all around the field and get longer and longer the more you make. The wind also starts playing a factor in ball flight, which is weird, because Lucas Oil Stadium is an indoor stadium, but I guess Peyton took the roof with him when he left. If you manage to hit a golden spotlight that’s shining between the uprights, your character will do a dance that I cannot describe; suffice it to say that were I to implement it myself on the field, it would make Sportscenter for sure, and not in a "top ten" kind of way.
After you clear In The Zone, you get a chance to try your foot at Coffin Corner, which is the punting portion of the game (punt your way to glory!). First off, let me say this: The punting mechanics in this game are horrible. Do not try to kick a football like your character unless you want to dislocate your hip. Grievous bodily injury aside, the point of this mode is to get the ball out of bounds as close to the goal line as possible, with bonus multipliers if you can hit it in the field of play first. Oddly enough, there’s no wind in this one. Maybe they think punting is hard enough as it is.
The fourth game mode is Time Attack, which is In The Zone but with a time limit of 60 seconds. Hitting all the colored spotlights will give you more time and points. After Time Attack comes Hit The Uprights, which is fairly self explanatory. The last mode is Coffin Corner Pro, which the game says is the ultimate punting test. Unfortunately, by this point the omnipresent announcer screaming “Great kick!!” after every single thing I did caused me to throw my phone into the pool and I didn’t get a chance to try it out.
NFL Kicker! is a decently entertaining game for about five to ten minutes, but once you’ve figured out how to move your finger in an up and down motion, you’ve pretty much mastered whatever gameplay it has to offer, and there’s not a whole lot of complexity to create any sort of replay value.
NFL Kicker! is created by Full Fat, costs 99 cents on the iTunes app store, and may or may not cause ferrets to take up residence in your gall bladder.
Chris "Warcraft" Kluwe is the Minnesota Vikings' punter, Tripping Icarus' bass player, and Andrew Reiner's personal chef.
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