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You've heard a lot about Football, American style. You may have even watched the Super Bowl on Channel 4 or played some of the other gridiron games. According to Gamestar (Activision's pet sports games writers) you haven't played American Football until you've gone down onto the field and felt the pain! GLF Championship Football gives you an inside the helmet view of the perfect passes, breaking runs and crunching tackles.

Played between you and either human or computer opponents the game is played between two of the mythical GLF's 28 teams that are arranged into North, South, East and West divisions and include football legends such as the Midgets, Whales, Mules, Cowpokes and Hackers. The leagues play no further part in the game although I suspect there is a disk version in which you can qualify for the playoffs. In this, the tape version the teams merely add variety and levels of difficulty as the top of the table teams have better lines and coaches than the bottom teams. As the game loads in, it's time to catch up on the basics.

American Football is a simple game in which the team have four attempts or downs to make ten yards. If they make the ten yards or more then they get another set of four downs and so on until they either lose the ball or reach the endzone and score a touchdown. It's how the teams try to make the yards is where the skill and strategy come into the game. The basic plays are the tuns that buy yards of turf with bruises as the running backs try to smash their way through. For longer gains or to keep the defence "honest" (guessing) the wide receivers run complicated pass patterns to get away from the defence so they can catch the quarterback's long passes. In GLF Football you play the running backs, kickers and wide receivers in all the important plays.

Your first job is to kick off and time your kick to put your opponents as far down field as possible.

When you team's defending, you sit on the sidelines but call the blitz, roll out and nickel defences to stop them making the ten yards. The screen then shows the key action in impressive 3D as the ball carrier is inevitably clobbered. Now it's your turn. Yet again you call the plays from the choice of 22 passing and 12 running plays but then take the leading roll. In a run you line up behind the quarterback and wait for his signal as he hands the ball to you. You then must wait for your offensive line to open up a gap before running for it. On a passing play, you like up on either side of the field opposite either one or two defenders. You then must run the defined pattern for the play to stand a chance of catching the ball. For example, a simple but effective streak left is eight steps down field then one back to collect the ball where as Curl out right is a little more complex with four steps downfield followed by four to the sideline before collecting the ball. These patterns are essential to keep the defence guessing and to ensure that the quarterback throws the ball to the right place.

These plays aren't as complicated as they sound and you'll soon be mixing power blasts with post lefts to get down the field to score a touchdown.

GLF Championship Football is a simple game to play that relies heavily on its "helmet view" graphics. The result is a playable but simplified game in which the game is played over four or seven minute quarters (not fifteen minute), uses unknown teams, only two penalties (delay of game and jumping off too soon) and rigid rules that means that once you've called a play you have to play it (no chance to fake a punt, run on a pass or razzle dazzle a run play into a touchdown pass.)

GLF Football will appeal to new football fans but real fanatics shouldn't expect too much from it.