The Onion: Cyberball

The Onion had another one of their brilliant video game related articles today, this time relaying the story of how there might be a lockout of the 2073 season of Cyberball if the Robot Players union and the league don't reach an agreement. Choice quote here:

"I am unable to detect any gratitude from owners of magnesium wide receivers and titanium running backs who continually execute, on command, motion-based operations with a 350-pound explosive ball. I honestly cannot believe my proximity sensors."

This got me to doing some research on this game (which I had never heard of before) and before I knew it I was playing the damned thing so not only is this an Onion entry but also a review. Two for one, yeah!.

Cyberball is the clever (for the 1980's) name given to an atari football game that featured robots instead of actual human players. There are many number of reasons why this was a wise decision, for one no need to get any license from the NFL or NFLPA, theres also no need to actually try to recreate any likenesses to actual human beings, and the abilities to create pallete swapped clone teams and use ultra bad ass imagery such as this.

The version I played was a demo freely available on the Xbox Live. It maintains the retro (read: cheap) graphics and gameplay but throws in some new artwork (based on this apparently) and menus so you dont feel like you just wasted 400 points on a crap game. Gameplay isn't necessarily crap (it is, after all, a port of an 80's atari game) it's simply limited.

Basically you control a red team playing against a blue one, you play both offense and defense and have the ability to choose one of four plays (there are more than four but there are only four presented at a time) ranging from pass and run to option, blitz and nickel. There are no first downs, rather the teams play with an atomic ball which must warms up after about four downs if the team does not score or get the ball to midfield.

You don't so much play this game as you participate in it. Passing is random, running is vaguely controllable and defense is impossible. Scoring is a bit easy only because it's more difficult to not catch a pass than it is to complete it. It's an interesting experience, one which plays surprisingly smoothly on the Xbox but when all is said and done the game is too dated to be that interesting. After all this kind of thing can now be found on the iPhone, with better gameplay and graphics. Still as a piece of nostalgia its relatively harmless and, I assume, the full game along with the ability to play online (and a variety of teams) makes it somewhat fun.

Here's the Onion article
Cyberball Robot Player's Union Says Lockout Likely In 2073 Season