I’m your host, Jonas Allen, and sitting beside me in the reviewers’ booth is Xbox, the progenitor of Microsoft’s latest football title, NFL Fever 2004. Fever 2004 is packing a serious punch this season, with some innovative gameplay features and online functionality via an XSN Sports service that’s so ironed-out it would inspire even John Madden to hop onto a plane headed for the nearest Xbox Live access.

That’s not to say it’s destined for the virtual Super Bowl, though, because as much as Fever has changed, it’s stayed surprisingly the same. The online play is convenient and intuitive, but the single-player game is still too easy to dominate. The "read-and-lead" passing is sheer genius, but the indecisiveness of the game’s graphics feels somewhat obtuse. Taken on its own, Fever 2004 stands a shot at becoming a popular game. But no game exists in a vacuum, and with the other football games competing this year, Fever 2004 ends up sucking air while crying "I coulda been a contenduh."

The controls and interface in Fever 2004 have both received noticeable upgrades this year, from buttons that allow you to call hot routes and either lob or line-drive the ball to a new "coaching" system by which the game gives you feedback based upon your yardage situation and opponent.

In the case of the latter, the repetitive animations between plays from previous versions of Fever have been replaced by the coach on the sideline telling you what to watch for from the opposing team. While this is mostly an audio touch, the play-calling menu also includes a section with the coach’s suggestions for your specific situation. This addition is helpful for new and veteran NFL Fever players alike, because even if you know which play you’re going to call, the coach helps reinforce that you should never play with blinders on and always look for the unexpected.

Likewise, in the case of the former, the game’s controls actually succeed at giving you freedom over how the plays unfold. For the most part running is running, but choose a pass play, and it’s off to the races, for multiple reasons. First, when passing you can press the button (or pull the trigger) lightly for a lob, or press/pull it hard for a bullet pass. You can also manipulate the D-pad to pass with a high or low arc depending on the position of the defender. This is particularly handy when passing over the middle, because Microsoft has beefed up the defensive AI so it’s harder to toss across the middle and not get creamed. Of course, they’ve also beefed up the "butterfingers" meter, because even when the defense is AWOL, you’ll find yourself dropping passes like PeeWee dropping trou in the adult theater.

Needless to say, this leads to some frustrating moments of invisible defensive backs, but I can almost forgive Microsoft for this AI "adjustment" due to one new feature alone: "read-and-lead" passing. In a nutshell, read-and-lead passing allows you to move your QB with the left thumbstick, "read" the defensive assignments, determine where you want to throw the ball with the right thumbstick, then pass with your button of choice and "lead" the receiver out of harm’s way and to the football.

If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Novices should stick with traditional button-press passing and call it a day. But if you can master, nay, if you can even handle the basics of read-and-lead, you’ll be able to pull off some highlight-reel plays. It’s still a challenge to pass across the middle, but the system actually rewards players who can "see the field" and act accordingly.

Take this skill online, and you’ll generate quite a reputation. And believe me, you will want to take this game online. Reasons for this vary, but there are two primary ones I’d like to point out. Boom! Reason One: despite all the defensive AI adjustments (let’s not call them all "enhancements"), it’s still easy to rack up points on the computer. While establishing my own multiple-season dynasty, I’ve had at least one undefeated season. And no, I never started a game over or played as an "all-star" team. With that in mind, it’s simply more fun to play against skilled human opponents, especially with all the trash-talking you can do on Xbox Live. Which brings me to….

Boom! Reason Two: XSN Sports. If read-and-lead passing was Microsoft’s gift to the football genre, then XSN Sports is the company’s petition for an 11^th Commandment. Something along the lines of "Thou shalt have fabulous stat-tracking and player-controlled leagues via XSNSports.com, and not covet thy neighbor’s tailgater." Honestly, playing the game is only half of the NFL Fever 2004 experience; setting up or playing in your own league deepens the online experience in previously unfathomable ways. Consider it the evolution of fantasy football, where you control the schedule as well as the performance.

The problem with all this is that NFL Fever 2004 is not XSN Sports. By that, I mean that no matter how great the online functionality is, we’re not reviewing the overall service, but an individual game. And on its own, NFL Fever 2004 is just a good, not groundbreaking, game. One great gameplay innovation (read and lead) does not a great game make.

You can still run up the score, albeit on the sidelines and not up the center. You can watch as players’ breakthrough runs inexplicably go from hyper-fast to super-slow in the span of five yards. You can see fields and stadiums become "distanced" from their realistic look by player models that are improved over previous versions but still not up to snuff with other games’. You can revel in not having to watch the same three post-play animations over and over, only to be annoyed by the coach’s sometimes-questionable suggestions and the uninspired play-by-play announcers.

Maybe I’m spoiled by ESPN NFL 2K4, but having played that game, I know what play-by-play announcing can be. And NFL Fever 2004 isn’t even in the same fantasy league. Remember Fever’s new coaching feature? Well, coach will cut off the announcers’ audio entirely, even in mid-sentence, if you move on to the next play too quickly. Remember the "two-plays-later" play-calling lag people used to joke about in football games of yore? It’s back to a certain extent when you’re down to the wire and enter a no-huddle offense. The game does support in-game Dolby Digital, which is great for on-the-field immersion, but the rest of the audio package just comes up fourth and short.

Where NFL Fever 2004 breaks through for a first and 10, though, it does so with an online replayability panache that no football game this year can stop. Online is truly where it’s at with Fever 2004, and for the first XSN-enabled game, it truly shows off the promise of Microsoft’s online sports brand. If the other XSN games (Project Gotham Racing 2, Amped 2, Top Spin, etc.) can deliver the same depth of options and customization, Xbox owners are in for a serious online treat once those games launch. Let’s just hope they offer a bit more in the stand-alone gameplay department than NFL Fever 2004.

See more screens on the NFL Fever 2004 media page