With the Madden series faltering in the mobile space the past few years, there aren’t a whole lot of options for gamers looking for an American football fix on the go. If you’re not in the market for a simulation-style game, then developer Run Games’ Football Heroes (Free) is one of the best football games out there. It’s an extremely over-the-top, arcadey game of football, but the most important thing is that it’s a heck of a lot of fun. It launched last November and has seen several updates in the months since, but Run Games had been hard at work on something big for Football Heroes, and this week a massive update went live for the game officially rebranding it as Football Heroes 2015. Just in time for the NFL season!
The full log of what’s new is extensive, and you can read all about it in the update notes in the App Store, but one of the biggest and most anticipated new additions is the arrival of a new Gold tier of player cards. Previously you could only get Bronze or Silver players, so an influx of over 100 new Gold player cards should really spice up your team’s lineup. In addition, all player cards now have a rarity associated with them so you can know more easily how valuable they are.
Another major change, one that I’m still not sure how I feel about, is a Retirement mechanic. Once a player card is capped out, that player will eventually “retire" and their stats will be drastically reduced. Technically you can keep them on your team but… there’s no real reason to. Pretty much you’ll want to ditch them and replace them with a different card and start leveling that player up.
The idea behind the Retirement thing is solid: Football Heroes is the type of game where you’re striving to level up your players and put together the strongest team possible. Once you do that, though, there’s no real incentive to use other players, and instead you might just stick with your beefed up team for eternity. It can get a bit stale, so Retirement is a nice way to make you switch things up every now and then. On the flip side, it’s hard pouring so much time and effort into leveling up your favorite cards only to have them eventually retire and become useless. It’s a sticky subject, and players in our forums have been voicing their feedback about it which Run Games have been happily taking in. But for now, the Retirement mechanic will stay as it is. I’d love to know what other players’ feelings are towards it so feel free to sound off in the comments.
Finally, this update officially makes Football Heroes a Universal app, but only the iPhone version has been updated. If you’re an iPad player and have been playing Football Heroes HD (Free), you’re going to want to follow the developer’s steps laid out in this post in order to transfer over your progress to the new Universal version of the game. Going forward, it sounds like the new Universal version will be the only version getting updates, with the iPad-only version being, well, retired.
Like I said, there is so, so much more that’s new in Football Heroes than what I’ve talked about here, like new Coin Battles, a new Fantasy division, new perks and so much more, so be sure to check the update notes to see all the nitty gritty. What’s important though is if you played Football Heroes to death over this past year, be sure to give the 2015 version a spin because it’s a totally refreshed experience now. If you’ve never checked out the game before and you’re an American football fan, you have to download and try Football Heroes 2015 as it’s an absolute blast and is considerably better after this major update. Oh one more thing: online multiplayer is still planned but didn’t make it in time for this update, but keep an eye out for news on that in the near future.
