Steam Reviews

[Colly]

For whatever reason, I had to log in to Steam today when I went to play PF2024 ( I normally play offline from Steam).

Anyway, since I was online and on the PF2024 page I figured I'd check out the Steam reviews for the game. I was surprised at how relatively few there were and how many were negative. I thought that maybe player apathy, as was the case for me, meant few people had left reviews. Anyway, I decided to leave a review and here it is below. I'd also encourage more people to leave a Steam review for this great game and help boost it's popularity on the Steam platform.

My Review...

Initially, after playing the demo, I was not going to upgrade from my 2022 version, mainly due to my continued frustration with the speed (or lack thereof) of screen loadings. It's awful, there's just no other way to describe it. Up to 5 seconds running Windows on Parallels for Mac and still 1 - 2 seconds on a native Windows gaming rig. Eventually, though, I caved, got over my deep frustration with the loading times and decided to see the game for what it is and what it does well.

What it is and does well is provide (in my estimation) the best all-around, in-depth, fully featured American Football sim game on the market. I own all the football sim games available and enjoy them all. But at the end of the day, I always return to my DDS football titles and when you add in the NFL mods and face pack mods there's no better game IMHO.

I typically play "offline" so my Steam hours do not represent my actual game hours. I'm now fully 300+ hours into this 2024 version and enjoying it immensely.

PROS:
-Ability to customize the league and play in online leagues if that's your thing.
-Real-world mods and face packs add to the immersion.
-Ability to upload your college football draft class to the pro game if that's your thing too.
-A dev team that listens, is active and keeps moving the franchise forward.
-A franchise that makes steady, if not always rapid, progress year over year.
-A good trading system (there's always room for improvement but the baseline is decent).
-Excellent update this year to the depth chart and packages system.
-Excellent game planning and strategy systems.
-Ability to customize plays.
-Excellent statistics and continued improvements to the game engine.
-Ability to copy data tables with one button and paste to spreadsheets etc. for more detailed analysis.
-Ability to export data to csv files from multiple screens.
-Good draft system
-Improved coaching team dynamics
-Improved scouting and recruiting system.

CONS:
-Screen loading times - I just can't flog this dead horse enough.
-Still a lot of opportunity for QOL improvements. So much scope for live links and many other quick links to be implemented. There's too often the need to navigate multiple screens in order to get to a screen you need. They are slowly improving this but it needs to be an area of focus. Anyone who's played Football Manager or even OOTP baseball will probably be pulling their hair out after a few minutes.
-The new game play graphics "actual players". It's new, it's badly executed but at least they let us choose the dots instead!
-Did I mention the load times?

MEH:
I was not a fan of the new game screen. As a player who tends to play each game - play-by-play, rather than sim each game, I was not liking the new zoom in feature as the play is executed. I also found the play by play detail did not hang around long enough either. However, like most new things, it's probably more a case of adapting to change, because with a few hundred hours in the game I'm not finding the zoom feature so bad after all.

Anyway, overall, I love this game and it's college football cousin and if you love football management and sim games give it a try. But don't take my word for it. Head over to Wolverine Studios and download a demo and try it for yourself.