Once again madden is left "Untouchable" in the professional football gaming industry
So lets start off with the new features of the game. Once again they have improved the control and feel of the defense. For those of you just getting into the madden playing community, this is very hard for you to understand. Put ease of use with the defense comes with practice, practice, and more practice. A couple of the new defesive features consist of shading recievers which allows you to tell the cornerback to play a certain shoulder side of the reciever in hopes of reading the pass and getting an interception. Another defensive feature is the assignment changes you can make the diffrent changes consist of zone, prevent zone, flats, blitz, QB contain, and QB spy. This makes it very easy to redesign your whole defesive scheme before the snap in just a few seconds. Its got to the point were people will blitz their "whole" defense just for laughs. Along with all these changes you can make your man play a man to man defense, witch allows you to double-cover certain breakout recievers (harrison,moss,etc.) that you could normally not stop in a game.
Well on to the other side of the ball, offense. The three biggest changes/improvments you will notice right away are the precission passing, QB vision control, and the TRUCK STICK. Let's start with truck, for those of you with a weak running game your prayers have been answered. This handy dandy game changing tool is now at your running backs disposle. Here's how you use it, let's say your the seahawks and you have broken a open field run with Shaun Alexander, the only thing between you and the end-zone is that mean free safety looking to ruin your moment, well you have a suprise for him right before you engage in the tackling process with him you click the R-analog stick down and forward, Alexander lowers his shoulder and puts his weight into the collision, the next thing that free safety knows is that hes layin on his @$$ and your fifty yards down field for the score. This feature can change the running game in many aspects and makes the defense scared of those pressure open-field tackles. On to the next feature,QB Vision Control, this new tool makes madden just one step closer to reality. Now how the QB vision control works is a beam of light shot out of your players eyesight shows were the QB can see and unfortuanetely who he is looking at. This feature sort of helps and hurts the offense, you can make more accurate passes, but the defese can see who and where you want to throw the ball to. Overall i like this feature because it makes it harder for the people who are just starting the game to figure out, so the veterens of the game can have an advantage. Finally on to the last new offensive feature of Madden 06, precission passing, this allows you to put the ball where ever you want on the reciever, you can throw it up high by right before throwing you press up on the left analog stick or directional pad plus the reciver's button. Now along with throwing up high on the reciever you can also through low around his knees and ankles, you can lead him by pressing left and right on the analog stick, depending on which way he is going, or you can go with a good ole straight to him pass by not pressing anything on the left analog stick.
Well that pretty much sums up the new features on Madden 06 for the XBOX. Recently I have bought high-speed internet which allows me to play on Xbox live (with an account). This really practices your skills and helps you get exposed to many different peoples offensive and defesive passing schemes. Overall it helps you improve at Madden drastically over a shor time. Anyways overall i think this is a fabulous game as usual the "Madden" series offers nothing than the best to its loyal gamers.