Backyard Football 2004 isn’t played from the classic "overhead and behind" view that we are all so used to seeing in football games. Instead, it’s played from a high side-view like you’re sitting on the top row of the bleachers at the fifty-yard line. The game is geared for a young audience and the graphics are cartoon-like in appearance featuring 3D player models on a 2D playing field. The overall look of the game is outdated when compared to other recent games.

The player models themselves are fairly detailed and the animations are pretty smooth, working well to support the cartoon-like feel of the game. There are a variety of player models on the field at any given time, and you can always tell the boys from the girls because the girls always have ponytails sticking out from the backs of their helmets. The players range in size and height from small and thin to tall and husky, there is even a kid in a wheel chair. The variety of player sizes is a nice touch, since not all kids are the same size in the real world.

There are four different gameplay modes in Backyard Football 2004. You can play single player, two-player with a friend (using the same keyboard), practice running your plays, or start a season. There is even a Hall of Fame that keeps track of you stats and lets you view the extras that you have unlocked throughout the game. Unlocking NFL jerseys, a new playing field and other goodies will keep you (and hopefully your kids) coming back for more.

Fictional announcers Chuck Downfield and Sunny Day provide the play-by-play commentary, which is humorous the first few times around, but quickly grows repetitive and stale, much like in the Madden football titles.

The game is controlled through a point and click interface that seems to work pretty well, although it may prove to be a little too complicated for the littler players in your house. Don’t spread this around, but I had a few instances of not being able to connect with my receivers when passing downfield. The "from the side" camera angle makes it difficult to find holes to run through, while the spin and dodge moves seem like they are mostly ineffective against the defense.

I’m not sure what age group Backyard Football 2004 is trying to reach here, because it seem a little too complicated for the younger kids between five and eight, and it’s too simple for the nine and up crowd. The game should have either been designed as a simple children’s game, or gone a little more realistic to appeal to the preteen gamers. As it stands now, Backyard Football 2004 is somewhere in between the two.

On the plus side, Backyard Football 2004 let’s you craft your own team using the NFL stars and the Backyard Kids together. You can design a team using all NFL stars if you like although it wont give you a huge advantage in this game, because the Backyard Kids can hold their own against the best of the NFL kids. You will see kids dropping passes, fumbling balls and being intercepted just as in a real game of football.

The main drawback to Backyard Football 2004 is the difficulty level of the game, and the ambiguous target market. Will your six-year-old daughter find the game too difficult? Or will your eleven-year-old son think it’s a "baby game?" It’s hard to say. It all depends upon each child’s gaming abilities and attention span, both of which will make or break this game for them.