Axis Football 2024 – Gamecritics.com (2025)

Loss Of A Few On That Play

HIGH More options on offense with greatly improved blocking AI and animations.

LOW “Appropriately challenging play experience” steers too close to “rubber banding”

WTF Why is my beloved Philadelphia Express ALWAYS terrible?

Every year around this time, I get excited for football season. I love the precision of an elite quarterback bulleting a pass between defenders to a streaking receiver and the relentless pursuit of a linebacker as they close in for a tackle or sack. Coaching matchups resembling chess masters vying for position on a board is fascinating, as are offensive linemen adjusting on the fly to create a hole for a crafty running back to slip through. For the past several seasons, the NFL has not been the object of my affection, though, but rather Axis Football. Unfortunately, a major design issue heavily limits my enjoyment of this year’s outing, Axis Football 2024.

Let’s start with the good.

Once again, Axis offers the deepest franchise mode available apart from straight management sims. Prospective GMs can manage everything from the intensity of practices to the conditions of the seating in their home stadiums. 2024 also allows players to customize the size of their league prior to starting a franchise and a handy team activity menu tracking signings, drafts, trades and more, so a coach can know what their opponents are up to and try to keep pace. Along with these changes, coaches can now edit their individual playbooks, and with designed QB runs and dozens of new defensive formations and plays to choose from, the customization options have never been better.

On the field, several welcome changes have been added, with an incredible focus on blocking. Over 75 (!!!) new blocking interactions have been introduced, and the results are fantastic. Instead of watching linemen slamming into one another, blocking animations more accurately depict the creation of running lanes or the absolute destruction of an offensive line by defenders. Teammates will now rush to pick up blocks downfield, allowing a receiver or runner to eke out a few more yards, or completely clear the path to the end zone. Ball carriers now have some physics on their side, as their momentum allows them to surge ahead despite being hit or bounce off of a tackler completely, opening up the field for potential big gains.

Axis Football 2024’s UI has been enhanced as well, showing previous plays called to help determine what calls have been effective. It also now shows how many yards were gained (or lost) on the previous play rather than having to wait for the next down and distance to be announced. Little details like pro-style lineup displays during the first possession of a game add to the immersion factor, and the new stadiums added this year are a treat for the eyes. Axis creates more representative schedules this go around, meaning dealing with fewer snowy fields in early October, for instance, and this year it’s possible to save a game in progress and return to it later for those times when life interferes with football, perish the thought.

Not all the grass is greener on Axis Football 2024’s lush fields, however.

Perhaps to provide an “Any Given Sunday” feel where even bad teams are capable of beating better rivals if everything falls the right way, Axis 2024 has added an adaptive difficulty mode. While this can lead to more exciting outcomes in lieu of potentially one-sided beatdowns, this feature feels more like the unfair rubber banding that something like Mario Kart has made infamous.

Here’s one of many examples —I led my stalwart Philadelphia Express down the field late in the game to take a two-score lead. This should be considered an achievement in itself as the Express is filled to the brim with sub-par players. When the opposing team takes possession, they’re suddenly able to make tremendous gains, breaking numerous tackles or avoiding the defense completely, gobbling up dozens of yards in a few plays for a quick TD. With time left on the clock, I get the ball back, only to be pummeled by a defense that I had skillfully dissected earlier. Those same linebackers are suddenly able to shred my linemen, moving faster than I’ve seen them move all game to nail a running back or sack my QB for a huge loss, forcing me to punt. With time running out, they punch in a TD.

Is this an exciting finish to a ballgame that I’d be happy I paid to see? Absolutely. Is it an enjoyable gameplay experience? Nope. I thought perhaps I was being overly dramatic because the Express are chumps, and I should be losing these games, but then I tried exhibition matches with the best team in the league playing the worst and got similar results with the best receiver in the league failing to get open and the worst quarterback lookling like Patrick Mahomes or Jalen Hurts. These WTF catch-ups are so overtly artificial, and it’s frustrating.

Less bothersome but still issues are things like the commentary, though it’s better-edited than in years past. There are fewer completely incorrect observations by the commentator, but the play-by-play constantly describes passes going past the first down marker when they are clearly only thrown a yard or two past the line of scrimmage. Also, it’s still not possible to make trades during a draft to try to improve upon an upcoming pick, which limits one’s ability to improve a team. Additionally, there are still instances of players running incorrect routes, kick returners snapping into position, or field goal attempts sailing through the back wall of a stadium, never to be seen again.

If there was an option to limit or remove the adaptive difficulty, I could live with the other minor issues and call Axis Football 2024 a triumph and a must-play sports title. As it stands, however, I can’t rate this year’s effort as high as I’d like to thanks to the incredible frustration of being impossibly steamrolled by a computer-controlled opponent who’s gaming the system in its favor. Where’s the ref?

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Axis Games. It is currently available on PC and PS5. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately12 hours of play were devotedto the single-player mode, and multiple games and seasons were completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. This game is a realistic depiction of professional American Football featuring blocks and tackling similar to an NFL broadcast. Injuries are described in text between plays and in status screens, but injured players are not shown on the field, and there is no blood.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not offer subtitles. While playable without sound, the in-game commentary is lost. Audio cues for turnovers are accompanied by a brief slow motion effect to alert the player. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.