Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played a down of professional football since 2017. Still, he is now the man on the cover of a fast-paced, high-impact football game from Saber Interactive, Wild Card Football, an arcade-style football game with no refs and no penalties but a lot of customization and a lot of wild twists.
Wild Card Football invites you to take your favourite NFL Players and play short games of 7-on-7 football, but you will notice right away that the teams aren’t the usual team names that you see in the NFL. While it appears that the game did not license the NFL teams and logos, they did license the NFLPA players so that you will be playing with familiar faces, including Team Mahomes, Team Allen, Team Tagovailoa and many more.
The animation style is a more caricatured look with wide-bodied characters and animations, a far departure from the more realistic football games that you may be used to. Gamers who can remember back to the old arcade sports games of old, like NFL Blitz or NBA Jam, can look at this game and instantly see exactly what you’ll have in store: a game with a foundation made from the basics of the sport with some cartoonish action added into the mix.
After selecting from a simplified playbook, you use some of your team’s energy to activate one or more of the titular Wild Cards to create an advantage for the upcoming down. The strategy of offence vs. defence, with the added challenge of the cards, creates a game of mental chess between your opponents.
Wild Cards range from boosting your stats (or lowering your opponent’s) and changing the rules, which can be anything from banning your opponent from selecting a passing play on their next down to receiving an additional point if you score and going even further with the biggest power-ups of all, allowing you to turn into a giant and stomp over the defensive line, become a rocket and blast past the o-line for a sack or summon UFOs to beam up your opponent.
“Colin Kaepernick is now the man on the cover of a fast-paced, high-impact football game from Saber Interactive, Wild Card Football.”
ESPN’s Chris Berman provides the voice behind Wild Card Football, which comes in a number of modes, including exhibition, allowing you to play against the computer or engage in multiplayer either locally or online (and yes, cross-play amongst the systems is available). You can start up a season campaign and try to go all the way to the championship game, or you can play in Dream Squad Mode, allowing you to build your own team with a customized logo, team name, stadium, uniform, and colours through special cards that you earn by getting special achievements in the game.
As you expand your deck, you can add bigger and better players to your squad, including the face of the game, Colin Kaepernick. You can also get crazy uniform upgrades like a flaming skull or a TV for a helmet or complete a set to look like anything from a pineapple to a robot and so much more. There are enough customization options that I doubt you’ll ever come across a team with an identical setup.
You can also customize your own playbook, allowing you to design your own offensive and defensive systems that work best with your gameplay. Do you like to go deep? You can load your offence up with long pass plays. Do you want to keep the pressure on the QB? Go ahead and trade that zone coverage for some blitzes.
The gameplay in Wild Card Football is, as expected, very fast-paced. After the snap, whether on offence or defence, you have the opportunity to gain a little boost with your player-controlled character if you press the correct button when you get the prompt to do so (It is a very small window to get the correct button, so I hope your reflexes are better than mine). If you do get the bonus, it gives you the edge to knock back your opponent to make the big play. If you don’t get the button, however, you don’t get penalized. There are controls to make the heroic dive for the catch or a big hit to force the fumble.
“It is certainly not as smooth as the Madden games, but Wild Card Football is looking for a hard-hitting experience.”
It is certainly not as smooth as the Madden games, but that is also a game that is specifically going for realism. Wild Card Football is looking for a hard-hitting experience. The animation of the tackles and the big hits come with a lot of impact with camera shakes, controller vibration and more. The celebration animations are more, for lack of a better term, animated. But don’t worry about getting a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. If you aren’t getting called for Pass Interference (which you are not), you can do the worm down the length of the field with no issues.
The game is available on the Nintendo Switch, on PC through Steam or the Epic Games Store, on XBox (Series X|S or X-Box One) and on PlayStation (5 or 4) for $39.99 USD for the standard version. The Deluxe Edition ($59.99 USD) gets you the game, the Legacy Players Expansion, allowing you to play as legends Barry Sanders, Dan Marino, Jerry Rice and Walter Payton and gives you the Season pass, giving access to 4 DLC packs over the course of the years, starting with the Blazing Bones Uniform Set on day one. The Ultimate Edition ($79.99 USD) gets you everything in the Deluxe version with ten additional legendary cosmetic sets.
Wild Card Football is a game meant for people looking for a party game or people who want a quick match with no long-term commitment. Whether playing locally or online, you can get in a complete game very quickly, or you can play a few in the time you’d play a normal single game of Madden. It’s a fun, albeit limited game so depending on your commitment to play time and what you are looking for in the mechanics of a football game, this may not be the one for you. It is, however, a fun little game delivered in small doses.
