Red Zone Action attempts to simulate NFL style play with fictional characters across various competitive online leagues, allowing you to test your managing skills against other players online.
It has a lot of features that can easily overwhelm new users, but has the potential for depth. Aside from standard drafting, there’s also a Youth Pull, allowing you to invite players to your Youth Academy. You can generate revenue by building a fan shop and determining what merchandise to sell and for how much. You can use money to hire players, coaches, and build facilities. There are weekly training sessions for players to develop and condition themselves.
So why did I rate this so low? Because the most important part of a sports sim is the sim engine itself in my view and that’s where I think this sim falls shortest. Sim results are incredibly unrealistic and takes me out of the experience. You go from getting beat 79-7 one game to winning 80-0 the next. The scores are so outrageous that the sim is laughable.
All the bells and whistles are great, but the game’s no fun without it feeling like reasonable results.