Axis Football 2026 is the first new Axis Football game to be released since its development switched to a 2-year development cycle. The extra development time means that I have slightly higher expectations for the game (especially after the previous, 2024 edition, ended up being a bit underwhelming). However, I am still going into this game with the tempered expectations of a low-budget indie game, and the satisfaction that it's a budget $20 title. This means that even if this release is bad, it can only be a quarter as disappointing as any annual release of Madden that costs 4 times as much.

I also put off playing this game until the end of December, even though I bought it on its Steam release date. I kept meaning to start playing it, but my gaming time has been very limited the last few months due to real life circumstances. I was so engrossed in Cities Skylines 2's first major expansion that I kept putting Axis Football off another week. Honestly, I wasn't in much of a hurry to jump into Axis. I was kind of still getting my football video game fix from this year's Madden, since I actually do kind of like the new weekly strategy feature in Franchise that uses coach abilities -- especially once the run blocking issues were patched and fixed (in, like, November!).

The 2-year development cycle also means that I didn't feel as much pressure to play and review this game as quickly as I normally do. I hope the developers at Axis, and anyone who might have been waiting for my review, can forgive me for the tardiness.

Mad scientist

Let's jump right in by talking about the biggest and potentially most innovative new feature of this year's game: the play editor. The previous version of Axis introduced a playbook editor, and this game lets users fill any gaps in those playbooks by creating your own custom plays. This works about how you would expect and doesn't really do anything particularly innovative. In my experience, the play creator is defined more by what it can't do, rather than by what it can do.

A new play creator can be used to fill-in under-developed formations or playbooks.

Your play designs are limited to only the play concepts that exist within the game (including the newly-added Run-Pass-Option (RPO) plays). Concepts like Read Option and Triple Option are still absent in the default playbooks, and you cannot create pure option plays in the play editor. You are also limited to the formations that are present in the game, so you cannot create your own custom formation. So if you were hoping to be able to mod in a college football league and play as a service academy running a Flexbone Triple Option playbook, then I'm sorry, you'll have to wait at least another 2 years. I also couldn't create a proper 3-2-6 defense.

Last week, I wrote a somewhat scathing review of the Bears' come-from-behind win against the Packers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. While most people were celebrating, I was critical. All year long, the Bears have been coasting on luck. Last week, I said that I suspect that luck to run out, and that I didn't believe that the Bears were actually good enough to compete with the likes of the Rams, 49ers, or Seahawks. Well, now I get to say "I told you so."

But I'm not annoyed that the Bears finally came crashing back down to Earth. I'm annoyed that I have to say "I told you so" about something else.

2 years ago, I wrote about my frustrations with 4th down decision-making. Put simply, I think that NFL coaches are far too willing to go for it on 4th down, and that they should kick field goals more often.

I bring this up because, in my opinion, it was the Bears' decision to go for it on 4th down multiple times last night that lost them the game. 3 times in the first half, the Bears were faced with 4th and short within easy field goal range. All 3 times, they went for it. Only once did they succeed. That success did lead to a touchdown.

But if the Bears had attempted all 3 field goals instead (taking back the touchdown they scored off the one successful conversion) (and assuming Cairo Santos made the kicks), then they would have scored a total of 9 points instead of 7. Had that been the case, Cole Khmet's miracle hail mary catch in the end zone with mere seconds left on the game clock would have put the Bears up by 2 points in regulation. Instead, it only tied the game, and the Bears lost in overtime.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh.

Cole Khmet's last-minute hail mary catch should have won the game, not tied it.

The most frustrating of these failed conversions was the first one, on the Bears' opening drive. The score was still 0-0, and the Bears had the opportunity to put the first points on the board. At this point, you have no idea how the game is going to go, and whether it's going to be a shoot-out or a defensive struggle. As such, I strongly feel that teams should just take the points. Get on the board. Let your defense play with a lead -- albeit a small lead.

The Bears managed to pull off yet another spectacular come-from-behind victory against the Packers in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. But I kind of wish they hadn't. Now, I'm going to be subjected to yet another 2 1/2 quarters of awful, depressing Bears' football next week.

This was the 7th such 4th quarter comeback this season, and it really does beg the question of whether the Bears are genuinely good, or if they are just lucky. Their play for the first 2 and a half quarters of football all year long has been abysmal. Fumbled snaps, penalties, receivers running the wrong routes or dropping open passes, and a defense that lets opponents march down the field with little-to-no resistance. At least special teams has been playing competently in the later stretches of the season. Cairos Santos has been reliably making his field goals, and the coverage teams aren't giving up huge returns or scores.

But then the end of the 3rd quarter rolls around, and the team goes into Madden-esque "turbo mode", and can suddenly do no wrong.

Photo credit: NFL, Amazon Prime.

Don't get cocky.

I love football. But as much as I love football, I hate watching bad football. I'm the kind of football fan who, while everyone else is clapping and cheering, I am actually yelling "What are you doing?!" at the other team when they do something stupid. Everyone else seems to think these Bears games are "thrilling"; I just think they're ugly. If this sort of thing happens once or twice per season, that's one thing. That builds character, and shows grit and determination. When almost half of the season is games like this, that signals that there is something fundamentally wrong with the team or its coaching. Just ask Vikings fans how easily this sort of "luck" can swing the other way in just a single season.

If this Bears team were genuinely good, I feel like they should be playing more competently in the first half, and then going "clutch" in the 4th quarter to seal the win. I would not expect a good team to be going down 21-3 at halftime, game after game, and relying on a fluke missed extra point to force the opponent to have to score a touchdown or bust in the closing minute to retake the lead.

If both defenses were playing great, and the halftime score were more like 10-3 or 13-6, that would be one thing. But the Bears' defense doesn't look great. They look like the proverbial stick of butter being bisected by a hot knife. The whole season, the defense's play has basically boiled down to "turnover or bust". They lead the league in takeaways, but if they don't get those takeaways, they typically give up a score.

Long-time readers of my blog probably weren't expecting a review of a game like this. Monster trucks have never been my thing, and this is a game that I would never have touched on my own. But now I'm also a father of a young son, who absolutely loves monster trucks. When I saw that this game was discounted 40% for a holiday sale, I bought it for him as a Christmas present -- in 2024 ... and oh my god, it's already next Christmas! Where does the time go? Anyway, he's still too young to really understand how to play video games, but he at least enjoys driving the trucks around in circles, or watching his parents play the game for him. I'm sure he'll grow into it.

While playing the game for him in an attempt to unlock some extra playable trucks, I realized that the game is kind of like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but with monster trucks. And I love the Tony Hawk games! So I went ahead and tried playing Monster Jam: Showdown, off and on, on my own account as well. While there is definitely fun to be had with Showdown, it is definitely not Tony Hawk!

Showdown has the potential to be "Tony Hawk, but with Monster Trucks"!

Moon physics

Tony Hawk, as a series of games, was a breakout hit, in large part, because it appealed to a wide variety of gamers, including many (like myself) who didn't give a shit about skateboarding. It accomplished this by having extremely tight, responsive controls and easily-understandable physics, that allowed players to enter a zen-like state in which we felt like unstoppable skateboarding gods -- even if we couldn't tell a kickflip from a manual.

This is not the case with Monster Jam: Showdown. The gameplay here is exceedingly arcadey. The trucks in the game just don't have the sense of weight and physicality that one might expect from the 6-ton motor behemoths that they are based on. These trucks often feel like they are on the moon, and the physics is horribly inconsistent, unpredictable, and prone to screwing the player over every chance it gets.

Incidental collisions with level geometry can
send the truck flying into the air.

Running over or clipping geometry in the arena could send the truck flying into the air. Taking a turn a little too hot and clipping the rocky wall of a racing circuit can launch the truck into a flip. Running over a football-sized rock on the side of the track can pop the truck off the road and flip it over. Stunts as simple as running over and smashing a line of cars can be frustratingly difficulty, as hitting the first car can send the truck flying 30 feet into the air, missing all the other cars, and landing on its back. Even at low speeds, it's almost impossible to tell if you'll run over the cars, or go flying into the sky, or roll over onto your side. It's also annoyingly easy to get stuck in flips, or in cycles of "break-dancing", in which the truck just keeps flipping around on the ground doing various "sidewall" spins on 2 tires.

This first expansion for Cities Skylines II is a year overdue. Personally, I was far more optimistic about it than most other players. Though that review was biased by the fact that I never got any of my cities up over 100 thousand population, and so wasn't running into many of the problems that other players experienced with the simulation breaking down in large cities. I think my largest city was somewhere around 70-74 thousand population at the point that I published my review.

The game launched in such a messy state that Colossal Order had to devote so much time and effort to fixing core problems that they had to keep delaying the expansion. They were in a really hard position, as publisher Paradox had sold the expansion with the deluxe editions of the game in pre-orders. This content was promised to players, and was sold to players prior to the game launching. It's not like Colossal Order could just not release it.

This stuff is exactly why pre-order and "Deluxe Edition" cultures in gaming need to die. With all games being available digitally (and most games being purchased digitally), there is no risk of a supply shortage, and so no reason to ever pre-order a game. Offering pre-orders and pre-order bonuses is just a cynical, anti-consumer trick of publishers to try to get more money out of gamers. Sell the product before it's actually for sale, and know that you're guaranteed to get at least that many sales, even if the game turns out bad.

Colossal Order did say that, due to the delays, they tried to fit as much water-based content as they could into this expansion. They also claimed to have put a lot of time into fleshing out systems and testing the new content to make sure it all worked. I had hoped that this supposedly more holistic approach to this expansion, and the extra time given to it, would alleviate many of the complaints that I had with the first game's expansions being so limited in scope. I'm sorry to say that it didn't quite work out that way.

Mmm, fish milk...

I'm also sorry to say that, while I was working on this review, Colossal Order and Paradox announced that Paradox has fired Colossal Order from its development duties on Cities: Skylines and Cities: Skylines II. After the end of this year, development of the game will shift to Paradox's in-house Iceflake Studios (the developer of Surviving The Aftermath). I had played Surviving the Aftermath. I thought it was fine, and largely had a good time with it, even though I never finished the campaign and never got around to reviewing it. So it's possible that Iceflake might handle Cities: Skylines II development just fine. But this situation sucks. Colossal Order created Cities: Skylines. It was their game (and series). For Paradox to yank it away from them in this blatant act of IP hoarding is just cruel, greedy, and evil.

I hope that Colossal Order survives, that they are able to retain most (if not all) of their staff through this, and that they come back swinging in a few years with a new city-building game that will rival Skylines. Maybe, in the long-term, competition between Paradox and Colossal Order will lead to a renaissance in modern city-building games, as each tries to out-do the other. But in the meantime, it's likely going to be a rough few years for Colossal Order, and I wish them all the best.

Repeating the first game's mistakes

The feature previews for the Bridges & Ports expansion sure seemed promising. New modular ports, bridges, drawbridges, proper quays and piers, a fishing industry, offshore oil drilling, waterfront zones, and a bunch of new parks and landmarks. It sure seemed like a fairly comprehensive and holistic feature suite, on paper.

But then I actually got to playing it, and almost immediately started to notice that there were things that I had hoped or expected to be included, which simply weren't. Despite the supposedly-holistic approach to water infrastructure, this expansion is still missing 2 key pieces of water recreation infrastructure that I've been asking for since the original Cities: Skylines over a decade ago. There are no public beaches, and no marinas. Yes, you can technically build a makeshift, superficial marina using the quays, piers, and a couple of boat props, along with any other Detailers' props or decorations. The piers do seem to provide some passive beautification, but nobody ever actually uses these structures that I might spend hours putting together. People don't walk the decks of the piers, or actually sail the prop boats out into the water. Would it really have been too much to ask to be able to create a simple seaway and "pleasure cruise area" for a marina, similar to the way that fishing areas are designated?

You can make makeshift marinas with quays, piers, and boat props, but nobody uses them.

The lack of public beaches really hurts the aesthetic of any coastal city. There are some props that can be placed on sandy beach areas to give some appearance of a beach. Maybe some tents here and there, some lawn chairs, and a few other such objects. But there are no beach towels, surf boards, sand castles, lifeguard towers, or things of that nature. Most importantly, just like with the makeshift marinas, nobody will ever actually go to that beach. People don't walk along the beach, swim in the water, sit in the lawn chairs, or play in the sand. The beaches are just completely lifeless.