Review: Madden ‘09
So Madden is out, has been patched, so Brett ended up on his respective team, my Bears are my favorite team and I finished the training to get my Madden IQ.
Yup, this is the typical experience when first firing up Madden. It is simple straight forward and designed to customize the game just for you. The Madden IQ score helps you in game by setting the difficulty for your season and Franchise experience. This is both a blessing and a curse. I excelled at the running portion, so much so that I am a All-Pro, the rest put me in the middle of the tier. I liked this, passing defense has always been a weakness in my ability to play the game. Also, reading defenses when passing has also been a problem. This helps adjust the play to your ability. The problem though, is I ran so good during the test phase, I can barely rush for more then 50 yards in one game. Now I am not a Madden expert, I love football, played football, and wished it was where I ended up somewhere after High School, so I do have the understanding of the game, but passing and passing defense have mystified me in the newer versions of Madden.
The game is presented in a very slick interface. In fact, it looks like they stole…err…borrowed from a competitor for one of their feature. Players on various teams have special abilities or roles, for instance, Brian Urlacher is a “Smart Player”, which is identified underneath him with a lightbulb icon. This seems to be taken from 2K’s All-Pro Football 2K8, except these players are identified on the field, on both sides of the ball all the time. This is nice for those who follow their team but not the league. The pre-snap configuration features includes a nice drop-down list on the left hand side of the screen that shows what audibles can be called and what all of the buttons do. This is a wonderful addition as I was almost always confused as to what button does what pre-snap, post-snap, etc. This concept is taken even further, by using the Madden IQ system, it will put icons over players heads when in situations you might need help in, say for instance, pass coverage, this will help remind you what button to hit to knock down a pass, or dive for the INT. I really like this feature it is not obtrusive and really helps me play better. As you get better the icons start going away. It is a really nice adaptive system (as long as you don’t over excel during testing.)
The have a wonderful replay system at half-time that helps high-light 5 key plays to the half, albeit cheesy, it is nice to see the feature used. Along with the replay feature offers one of the coolest innovations in this genre, Rewind. Now time manipulation is nothing new to gaming, but I do feel it is something new to sports. With this option, I have the opportunity to rewind a play and do it over. In my case I only seem to get one of these a game, depending on your level of skill I bet this is adjusted. This can turn a barely incomplete pass into a touch down, or expose a open receiver for that game breaking first down. In my case, it turned a botched field-goal into a game winner. This is a great feature that adds a lot more to the game. I cannot believe it had not been attempted before (it may have been, but I am unaware of it).
Now onto my major beef with the game, I have two of them. First, commentary. This is at least an upgrade over the last few years and does seem to be getting a bit more adaptive. However it still seems out of place and a bit robotic at times. Organic commentary is still a ways off. My biggest complaint here is the stupid announcement, in what seems like once EVERY set of downs is “Remember, this game was brought to you by EA”. Duh, I bought it, unwrapped it, saw the logo. I know this and do not needed it pounded into my head. I guess this is the EA corporate machine at work. Speaking of that machine, problem 2, odd in place adds. My half-time reporting is brought to me by Sprint and my on-screen stats, by Snickers. These seem out of place and I do not like them. I spent 60 bucks on a game and you are going to bombard me with advertising. I understand this is part of the game machine now a days with budgets approaching 20 million plus on some titles, however this is so in your face and obsessive it turns me off to it. There are ads in the game I will review next, “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames”, but the are not in your face. I was running around and saw an ad for some movie, and said, thats kinda neat, on a billboard, out of the way. That is how it should be done. I know that are reaching for more gains per game and ads help capitalize on that, make them stadium ads, not TV presentation. I guess with the medium growing closer to that, we will have to deal with more products going to the TV presentation style. If this becomes adaptive with “updates” including ad upgrades, I will begin to get even more frustrated. Lower the price of games or ditch ads, your choice.
I will get off my soap box and get back to Madden. If you have taken a break from the series or are an every other year guy, you will want to give this one a look. They took a lot of things and polished them. They really seemed to grow the product a lot. The need to fix the commentary, but aside from that it is neat. There are a whole slew of features I have not even touched including Fantasy football score tracking, sports tickers, etc.
All in all if you like football and are looking for a game to keep you entertained, this might just do it. From what I hear, Midway may have a diamond in the rough for the casual football fan in Blitz: The League II, so keep an eye out for a review of that.