Arena Football [PS2]

You'd think that Electronic Arts would be happy to just dish out a new Madden title each year, especially now that it's locked up the license for NFL teams and players. But, no, there are still new football frontiers to tackle -- EA has turned to another version of the gridiron grind to cover the period between the Super Bowl and the beginning of the next season. Best of all, an early look at Arena Football reveals that it's on track to capture the intensity and pace of the AFL, which will offer vastly different gameplay from any Madden release.

In Arena, games are played on a 50-yard field with each team fielding eight players, so the speed of the game is much more frenetic than an NFL match. Also, most of the players cover both offense and defense (with tight restrictions on substitutions), so it's more like basketball in that regard.

The field is also ringed with walls that serve as out-of-bounds lines, so you get action that's somewhat like hockey. Players often get driven into the boards on a tackle or even toppled over for some intense spectating moments. Also, the goalposts in each end zone are flanked with tight nets -- so if a kickoff hits them, the returner generally has to turn his back to the defenders to handle the ball. The results can get squishy.

So overall, Arena is a fast-paced, pass-heavy, high-scoring sport that is designed to drive fan enthusiasm: Two teams combining for over 100 points in a game is the norm.

Development of the game is being done at EA's Tiburon studio, which also handles the Madden and NCAA Football franchises. However, while Arena Football uses the same core engine as the other two, you won't find the gameplay to be mirrored. In addition to the ruleset differences, EA turned to a new dev team at Tiburon to put it together. Members of Hypnotix, a studio best known for the respectable Outlaw Golf series, were moved down to Tiburon to work on the game.

Product manager Kendall Boyd told us there's added depth thanks to a telemetry system that, with one button press, enables the color-based display of the opposing players' fatigue level. With this, the offense can exploit defenders that are tired or injured. But the differences don't end there.

"When you look at the overall speed of the game, it's about 25 percent faster than Madden," Boyd said. "We re-created that you're in a tight arena, with a PA announcer and music playing throughout, which gives a more visceral experience. We wanted to capture the speed and physical nature of the game."