My first thoughts when playing
NFL GameDay 2001 for the first time:
Am I playing this on Playstation 2??? I'm not kidding, I found the graphics to be that atrocious. Player models were far from smooth, very blocky, and the crowd was horrid. In fact, those lesser player models looked so ugly that when animations took place, they looked just as bad. However, to give a little praise, player model sizes DID differentiate between height and weight. I will say that the good I found in the animations was the trash talking of the players. The mouths mimicked actual speaking styles, but that is far from making the graphics formidable. As previously mentioned, the crowds were less than attractive. If you have played
GameDay for Playstation One, then you'll probably recognize the similarity between the two, except there is no difference at all. Stadiums did have historical landmarks, and also endured some wear and tear throughout the game, but again, it wasn't too impressive.
Trash talking is the best audio feature for this year's version, probably because it hasn't been so enforced in years past. Crowd noise is decent, and so is the stadium background music. Play-by-play men Dick Enberg and Phil Simms were back for another year, but I swear I heard half the stuff they had to say from the '99 version.