How realistic is Madden 2005? Well let’s go to my first play from scrimmage to see if we can find out. I had just stopped Peyton Manning and the Colts for the three and out behind the awesome defense of my Chargers. After the kicker kicks it into the end zone for a touchback I get to work. A quick check in the options menu tells me that the A button is used for sprinting, I call a run play and see what happens. Rivers hands the ball off to Tomlinson, I cut to the right and run, and run, and run, and run, and…. Run. That’s right, on my very first play from scrimmage I broke down off an 80 yard run. I’m not alone here either; Cinescape Magazine’s James Stevenson mentioned to me that he had more than 500 yards of passing in his first game. Cranking up the difficulty to the higher levels will yield slightly more realistic results, but they're still well above what you'd expect to see in a real NFL game. To put this into perspective, I was averaging at least 400 offensive yards a game with my lowly Chargers, about 200 of which often came from Ladanian Tomlinson.
One of the major problems with EA's early next generation endeavors was that they often looked pretty but lacked substance. Now it appears that the exact opposite is true. EA has taken some serious steps back in the visuals department, culminating with a 2004 lineup that looks straight out of 2002. Stadiums have been redesigned and players have been revamped, but you'd be hard-pressed to find the difference. Compare the visuals in Madden to those of
NFL2K5 and you have something that looks like it was made by a bunch of amateurs. Watching a quarterback drop back, face towards the wrong end zone and then spin around completely to launch a 50 yard pass is just ridiculously bad, almost comical. In past years the look of the game was passable because the competition was so far behind. Now that Madden has been passed, it'll be interesting to see if the designers can up the ante in next year's game. The create-a-fan mode is pretty nice though, it's entertaining to see my created fans sitting in the stands.
I'm not sure if the sound designers got the memo, but most of the people who play Madden are fans of the real game of football. So why they continually decide to include mainstream pop-rock tracks in their games is a mystery to me. Here you get some truly awful tracks from some of today's most popular teenie bopper chart toppers. Also, including social commentary tracks like Green Day's "American Idiot" was just a perplexing move, especially considering the message of the song. I'm here to play football, not bitch about the media's control over the public. Sandwiching it in a lineup that features tracks from bands like NewFound Glory and Hoobastank doesn't help matters either. As for the commentary, you don't really need me to tell you how awful it is. You've all played a Madden game before, you know exactly what to expect here.
All of those additions are nice but the biggest one for Xbox owners is probably the inclusion of Xbox Live. As far as Xbox owners are concerned, this is probably the single greatest reason to upgrade from Madden 2004 to Madden 2005. We’re happy to report that it works quite well thanks to some solid network code and cheating countermeasures instilled by the guys at EA. Are you tired of playing against annoying 12-year-olds who keep going for it on 4th and 15 when their back is to the end zone? Apparently you’re not alone because Madden 2005 contains a new feature to combat this annoyance. Called Fair Play, the system ensures that players maintain the highest amount of realism possible. So if you’ve got a 4th and 30 play ahead of you and you’re on your own 20 you’re out of luck. You’ll have to kick it away, just like in real life. What’s nice is that the designers of the feature had the vision to see that players aren’t always playing cheap in these situations; sometimes they sincerely need to go for it on 4th and long and a conversion could mean the difference between the W and the L. For this the system makes exceptions, smart ones at that. Let’s say you’re stuck on no man’s land between midfield and your opponent’s 40. You’re out of field goal range but kicking it back is pointless because they’re bound to get great field position out of it. In real life most teams will go for it on 4th and short in this situation; if they convert it’s a great move, if they don’t then they’re not hurt too much by it. The same holds true here, you can go for it if the situation seems logical. If not then well, you’re out of luck. This will also be the first time that EA tests the waters with its premium online league service. It’s not up and running yet so we werent’ able to test it yet.
What's left to say? Well I'll leave you with the same parting words that I used for my review of
Madden 2004: "Ive played EA Sports’ line of Madden games since the series made its debut on the Sega Genesis back in the early 90s. I was hooked and I made it a point to pick up the newest entry into the series the day it was released because I didn’t want to miss out on anything. Flash forward 10 years and now my enthusiasm for the series has waned a bit. It doesn’t seem like EA Sports has done much with the series ever since it appeared on the PS2 and to be honest, each and every entry since Madden 2001 has felt like a thinly disguised expansion pack sold at a retail game price point. Each year adds new features but the minor additions make me wonder whether the $50 that gamers are willing to pay each and every year is justified. Perhaps I’m just getting a little jaded, or maybe the luster of the series is starting to wear off, but the 2004 entry in the series just isn’t as appealing to me anymore and in fact, the series has dropped from “Must Buy” status to “Buy if there’s nothing else worth getting” status. Not that Madden 2004 isn’t a great game, it’s just that it’s more of the same and unless that’s OK with you, you might want to hesitate a bit before running out to pick this one up."
With SEGA selling its franchise for $19.99 this year, those words have never rung more true. If you're willing to take a chance I'd say that you should bench Madden and take
NFL2K5 for a spin. In our opinion, it's the better football game this year.
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SEGA affirmed what we believed all along, why pay full price for an expansion pack? Madden adds a couple of new features, but none of which are worth the hefty price tag.
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