First Impressions: Madden may be growing old, but it's still a very fun football game.
The Bad: The amount of features almost overwhelms you; Some of the smaller parts of the game grow stale fast; graphics are sloppy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let me lay it to you straight. I haven't gotten a Madden game since Madden 2002. This game was a pretty welcome introduction back into the series. It has a ton of features and lots of options. And on top of that, it's just plain fun. The big changes this year are the highlight stick and lead blocking for offense. The way the highlight stick works, is that you press up to do a shoulder charge for a power back or a evasion move for a more agile back. It's pretty easy to use, and it really gives you an advantage once you figure it out. Lead blocking basically works like this: you press the B button until you're the guy you want to be. Snap the ball and then lay into someone. After that, you can change back to the back if you want to. It's interesting, but not really necessary. It's also kind of hard to get a good angle using it, and you'll often miss a block that tackles you're back for a big loss. Madden has a whole bunch of ways to play. You have the Play Now, which is pretty explanatory. Then you have Franchise, NFL Online, NFL Network, Superstar Mode, and a bunch of mini-games. The franchise is the same thing Madden's had for the past couple of years. You have cool little things like the Tony Bruno radio show, which has surprising depth, and newspapers of what's going on in your city and national. It also has a new Rookie scouting thing that I haven't tried yet. Superstar mode is an amazing feature, just because of the new influence system. The way it works is you get influence points based on what you're doing out on the field. If you're a QB and throwing touchdown after touchdown, you're gonna fill up you're influence meter pretty fast. If you're throwing interceptions, you're influence levels going to go down. The more influence you have, the more you can upgrade yourself or your teammates. It's a fun feature that's really addicting. All the mini-games in this are pretty good for a while. You have a bunch of different games ranging from lineback chasing drills to a punter training drill. Some of these are more boring than others, but a few can be fun, until they get to the brutally hard higher levels. Rushing Attack is a blast, too, as you try to get as many touchdowns as possible, then switch to D and try to give up as few as possible. Here is one place where I think the 360 absolutely dominates the game: graphics. The graphics in the xbox version look kind of bland. Not much detail to the faces or the crowd or anything like that. It just doesn't look that good. On that note, the sound isn't the greatest either. The soundtrack has some downright weird music, and while I like Underoath's music, I have no idea why they thought putting "You're Ever So Inviting" in the game. It just doesn't fit. Fortunately, this year EA put a bunch of NFL Films music in here, too. This is great stuff. It really sets the mood for the games. The sound in-game isn't that bad either.
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Gameplay: Lots of stuff to keep you entertained for a while.
Graphics: They just don't look extremely good.
Sound: A strange soundtrack, but is saved by the classic NFL Films.
Value: Plenty to keep you here a while.
Final Words/Tilt: This is a good effort by EA. They put enough stuff in here to give the gamer lots of options, but didn't make everything as fun as they could have.