When EA Sports scored their mega-million dollar deal with the National Football League over a year ago, the industry was abuzz with the news...and plenty of stinging criticism. But apparently another acquisition kind of went unnoticed, and that was the acquisition of an exclusive AFL license. Apparently, EA was out to shut down any sort of football competition whatsoever, therefore making a deal on both NFL football and arena football. We've already seen the NFL product that's oozed out on the market with Madden NFL 06, so where does that leave the AFL? Right smack dab in the middle of Arena Football, a game rapidly approaching its release next month for the PS2 and Xbox.

Some of you might wonder just what the big deal is with arena football. Well, to be honest, it's actually just as intense and exciting as regular football, and even more so since it has walls on the side that prevent wimpy running-out-of-bounds plays. Furthermore, most of the offensive players turn right around and play defense, about six on a team. Let's see Terrell Owens do THAT. Yeah, he won't. Even if he had a team. There's a variety of teams garnering attention in the AFL, including the Colorado Crush, last year's distinguished champions. (That might explain why the Crush's quarterback is on the cover, eh?)

This is EA Tiburon's first attempt at tackling (oops, pun!) the Arena Football license, but they certainly look up to task in terms of capturing the visceral emotion of the sport. The game features some of the hugest hits you've seen in a football game since the old NFL Blitz days, especially a contact that will leave the player pinned between a defender and a wall. Ouch. The game benefits from having an official AFL playbook, studied carefully by the coaches for each team for the most impeccable realism to the sport. You'll have a wide variety of passing, running, and defensive plays that could make all the difference with six points on the line.

The game will also introduce a feature called Telemetry, which tells you real-time information about your opponent so you can pay better attention to strategies and try to focus on weak points in order to get the easy score. There's also detail on such items as scoring history, coverage maneuvers, player health (so you can keep an eye on who to take out and who to put in), and passing tendencies, so you can work better on your interceptions.

But Telemetry is only the beginning of the game's features. There will also be a fully stacked Season Mode where you can take your AFL team to absolute glory, as well as online play via Xbox Live and the PS2 servers to show everyone who's boss on the arena football field. The game will also allow you to customize your own player to create a legacy, as well as building your own team franchise and showing John Elway and Jon Bon Jovi how it's really done. They thought they were smart AFL team owners...ha! Time to show 'em who's boss.

EA Tiburon is also making sure that the presentation is fully up to par with the sport. The game will feature various stadiums used by the real AFL teams, as well as solid animation, lighting effects, and dynamic gameplay. The kicking system is said to be the best yet in a football game, with complete control over your kicker and the trajectory of the ball. Of course, Madden had a decent kicking system in itself, so we'll have to see how it holds up. The crowd will also be heavily into the game, complete with home-team celebrations and plenty of fireworks in the air.

It'll probably take a while for Arena Football to garner some kind of popularity status along the lines of Madden. In fact, it's hard to say if it'll even reach that kind of plateau. But it does look to be a different kind of football game, and considering there were only two on the market to choose from last year, that's not a bad thing. Look for us to tackle (another pun...hoho!) Arena Football upon its release next month, and announce our complete dominance of the indoor field goal. Hey, it's not the easiest skill to master, folks. It takes footing.