Axis Football 2024 is a groundbreaking American football game, looking to take Madden‘s crown.
When it comes to American Football games we aren’t exactly spoiled for choice, much like football/soccer major franchises and yearly releases eventually squeezed most competitors out of the top spots, reducing other survivors to fringe titles that struggle to reach a large audience. Axis Football 2024 is the series’ seventh iteration and has moved from PC-only to also being available on consoles. It’s doing alright!
Featuring multiple different game modes, ranging from exhibition games to a career mode, Axis Football has quite a bit to offer now. There are a couple of things to state off the bat though, namely, that it’s in a distinct style that feels, well, retro rather than dated, and while it includes all the teams in the current NFL season, all of the names are changed.
The retro-style graphics give the game an older look as if it was something made a few console generations back. This makes a change from the hyper-realism-focused graphics seen in Madden games, which Axis Football 2024 is otherwise incredibly similar to.
The GUI is dark, following the colour scheme that’s featured on the front cover: The dark background persists in the game itself, with grey for each menu item to help blend it into the background.
The different modes seen in Axis Football are a lot better for people who would rather get into a game quicker than having longer loading times seen in Madden. The quick transitions in the menus mean there is more time spent playing games, than there is actually looking at different cutscenes or even scrolling through endless tutorials.
A slight problem for some, but not all, will be the lack of licensing found in Axis Football. This causes an issue for some, as they feel the game isn’t realistic enough. However, this isn’t a massive issue for all, and in my opinion, it does make Axis Football 2024 feel unique — it also stops you from getting distracted chasing real-world superstars.
That said, maybe the developers could maybe look into allowing people to download licensing packs online for the PC version
The franchise mode in Axis is great fun, but mainly because of what it does differently from other American Football games: Facilities. You can build, upgrade and repair facilities around your team’s stadium, and there are four facilities to choose from: The stadium itself, training, rehab and transportation.
Each of these has separate parts to upgrade, repair or build. For example, changing the field condition in the stadium section affects injury chance, so the more damaged the pitch is the higher the chance of injury there is, whereas a fresh new pitch would have less chance of injury.
Axis Football 2024 is a really concise American Football title, while it might miss some of the depth that its contemporaries have, that’s perhaps to be expected of the series. That said, it’s going from strength to strength, and you’d be a fool to not consider that with a few more entries this could be a real contender for the crown.
Axis Football 2024 is available now for PC, Xbox and PlayStation platforms. There are also version for Nintendo Switch as well as mobile versions, although these seem different than the version I played.
