Stop Gap Year: Madden 06

As you may or may not have seen yet, our review of Madden NFL 06 went up last night. I've spent the last few weeks playing the game pretty much non-stop, and I've never been so thoroughly done with a football game at the end of a review period than I was with 06. Inherently, there are great qualities in this year's game, but a whole lot of them were present in Madden NFL 2005--a game I already own. What, if I might ask, do I really get out of this game besides the lousy superstar mode and a passing cone that took me way too long to actually start enjoying? Not much, it seems. Maybe I'll just start on updating my rosters in Madden 2005 and ESPN NFL 2K5 this weekend.

Since the review hit, I've seen a whole lot of people flipping out, blaming EA Tiburon's laziness for the lack of enthralling new features in 06. It's an easy assumption to make, since now there's no competition, and EA can kind of do as it pleases with its NFL franchise. I wouldn't be so quick to blame Tiburon's "laziness," however. If anything, I get the feeling that they were stretched pretty thin as a team, with a whole lot of them working hard on Madden Next-Gen. Supposedly, that'll be a fairly different game from this one--though how different remains to be seen. I'm not saying you should be happy that Madden 06 didn't outdo its predecessor, but I am saying that you might want to give the developers a little more credit than that. They've been putting out great football for many years now, and one title that's a little on the lacking side in certain areas is no reason to completely dismiss EA football outright. Give them another year, and I bet they'll come back fighting strong. At least, I friggin' hope they will.

I will say that the whole "Pay two dollars or let ESPN spam your inbox" thing for the PS2 online thing is competely gross. Ew.

So, are you one of the Madden faithful who will buy 06 just like every other year? Or does this year's game just not sound like your cup of tea? Discuss!