The FIrst next-gen football game worth buying/keeping.

User Rating: 8.6 | Madden NFL 08 X360
Let me say up front, I have never liked Madden football games, ever. I have always felt they just lived off the name and have no real insentive to improve. I always felt 2K football games were light years ahead of madden. (2k5 football being my favorite console game of ALL TIME.) Once EA purchased the NFL logo rights, I pretty much wrote off console football games, expecting them to suck. The last 2 versions of Madden have met my expectations, both (06, 07) sucking out loud. The only good point in those games were the graphics, everthing else was very poorly done. Both games were returned for credit with-in a month.

This year is different, they have fixed the most important aspect of the game, game play! The running is now fluid and movement transition appear realistic. You feel like you actually have a chance to make a play and impact the outcome. They also improved on the graphics, adding gang tackles and late grabs that pull the runner back or allow him to shake off the person grabbing him. In prior versions, these things just didnt exist. The weapons feature seems like a useful addition, I'll have to play a bit more to get the full idea of that one, but it basically high lights a player best attribute, so you know who to use or go to in a given play. The audio/broadcast still sucks. The sideline press people look awful. The team on the side line looks silly, when 9 of the are standing the same exact way and all move the same. I do like the new replay feature between quarters. They put the six biggest plays on the game in a menu and you can pick which ones to play, kinda neat.

I still need to play on-line a few more times before I can be sure its solid, but so far no lag issues and it seems pretty tight.

Over all I'd say it's worth buying. Its not perfect, but the things that are wrong can be forgiven because the game play has been improved. It took them 3 tries, but this one will not be returned.