Far from the Madden tradition, NFL Tour delivers its own unique touch of football madness to the Xbox 360, where players are treated to smash-and-dash gameplay and high-scoring half times. Similar to Blitz: The League, NFL Tour provides a quick fix to your football cravings and it manages that aspect particularly well. Though, the game is built primarily for those individuals looking into an arcade experience, it did not come with enough interesting options that would have kept us motivated to continue the “Tour”. Nevertheless, the gameplay is excellent. The action is fast and the controls are very easy to learn. The turbo in conjunction with certain action button results in dramatic performances like wall jumps and incredible ankle breakers.

The graphics are relatively average to say the least. The textures on the athletes lack aesthetic appeal; it’s difficult to identify their faces. The stadium design is somewhat bland and the crowd looks like they have been mass replicated. Fortunately, the animation is very smooth and you are given a number of touchdown celebrations and catchy fireworks to go with your scoring. It’s nice to see the context menus worked in to your running phase that add spectacles to breaking tackles. We like how the game uses blur effects when triggering the turbo button, the particle trails on the ball, and the implementation of the so-called smash meter for the defense. Our favorite part is how everything loads so fast that it’s seamless! However, we have some gripes about NFL Tour’s poor stats tracking feature and very thin character customization.

The game does not carry many of your statistical achievements over the succeeding matches like the average pass yardage for a team and the total QB sacks. Creating a character is mundane. The choices for customization are very limited. You can’t even change your player’s height! Plus, there is no room for progress on improving skills and attributes. There are several basic features missing in this game. One of them is instant replay. It would be nice to see some highlight reels how your player eluded several tacklers as he went for a score. In the audio department, the game offers some decent sound effects. Good interaction from the crowd and the tackles radiates some fairly solid impact. The commentaries, however, are a big nuisance. He keeps making dumb jokes of how he is going to repeat the same comments because he did not get paid enough for his contract. Thankfully, you can just mute down his speeches off the main menu. Suffice to say, we still had some good times with NFL Tour.

The standard game modes are Arcade and Tour. Ironically, most of the heated action is in the Arcade setting as Tour is limited to one player. The Tour is basically your career mode and it progresses like a ladder-style match. You’ll be given different scenario for each tournament you qualified in. It could range from coming back from a deficit to scoring first on certain number of points. While there isn’t much excitement on the single-player mode, you can crank up the adrenaline charge with the multiplayer option. As we have said before, NFL Tour is a great pick-up game but to maximize its experience, it's best played with friends. Solid animation, fast loading times, and excellent controls are its greatest assets. However, it’s very short on attitude and showmanship. This could've been a nice arcade game if it weren’t for the scanty features and wretched commentaries. We recommended that you rent it first.