My first reaction to this game was great I liked the arcade play which is always top notch. But it felt the same..... the players were the same all the interfaces were the same as well just with different 2d screens. But then again if it ain't broke why fix it. Then I started noticing flaws as I played on, the comeback code is still there which was good in a way cuz it made it more challanging but when you lose all the time it sucks and it starts to become predictable.
It makes you become a one dimensional team by making you run the ball and rarely pass because you know the interception is coming.
Even when you run the ball tho they get you with a fumble once you get deep into there territory. Yeah you can play around with sliders but they are not perfect. If you move them a little to your advantage they really don't work. If you move them too much then your team is too powerfull and you get insane stats.
I have now played a full season which is good cuz I never played an entire season on a Madden game and that in itself says alot about this game. But if you play teams with winning records you always loose no matter what.
Overall this is a good 1 on 1 game and that's it. The AI is much improved but still no CPU initiated trades.
League play and Franchise
It's impossible to run a league on this game. If you have a head to head league the same people will win over and over no matter what players they have. That was proven to me by my friend who ran a Madden 2002 league that went thru 11 seasons year round. Only 3 teams won all the championships including 1 guy who took 6 of those championships. Since this game has the same feel and gameplay as 2002 did then it will be evident here to as well.
If you run a sim league the teams that look good on paper are the ones that win. You rarely get the occasional upset on a simleague. Enter Coachmode!!!! this would've been perfect cuz you would see everything unfold in realtime. Again this is impossible because there is too many sacks and the computer teams always win no matter what. The quarterback doesn't think quickly enough and ends up getting sacked like 20 times in a game. If EA can fix that with there 1 patch per game quota then this'll be the perfect way to run a league.
I went thru a season with my UFL league my team went 6-10 but I'll have better luck next year hopefully. I made 2 allmadden teams The Panama Predators and the Mexicali Monsters since the Monsters were in my Division I wanted a challenge hehe. The stats the monsters produced were insane both the running back Marquise Vickers and receiver James Horton went over 2500 yards for the season.
We had 1 undefeated team and 1 team that didn't win squat which is okay cuz it could happen in the NFL. Other than that with a few tweaks here and there I think I can run this league here for a while.
Franchise/Owner mode is good because it is very realistic but confusing at the sametime. I was trying to hire a different defensive coordinator and ended up hiring him as the coach and firing my coach in the process. Setting ticket prices and upgrading your stadium is cool too. My franchise team was the Raiders and I drove that team to the ground because I suck from a finacial point of view. With a little more practice it'll be cool. The only complaint I have with Owner mode you can't see the players stats beofre signing him.
Custom Teams
There's many features here I liked and didn't like. Alternate uniforms are good they should've added this feature when they added it to nba live. When you create your team you get to choose what time of team you want it to be and you get a non NFL roster which is cool. On last years version you had to choose an nfl team roster and I would end up with 3 teams with identical rosters so kudos to EA for adding this feature. The Stadium editor is a joke it's not really an editor just extra features added on the create a team screen.
I was expecting a 3d editor where you get to see everything in real time. The only bad thing about the team editor is you can't change certain things on the players like years in the league, the faces, the players names which kinda sucks in a way but oh well maybe next year. You still can't make your own Jerseys or pants from scratch which is another flaw but I guess it's because the way the player was made with all the scaling that's done when building a player.
Play Editor
The play editor is pretty basic but enough to hold me over. You can edit wide receiver routes now which is cool but you can't edit runningback routes. I don't like how you have to create a whole playbook in order to use just one play. Another thing is you can't add that same play into a different playbook which sucks and once again I'll say it... oh well maybe next year. Defensive plays are a little confusing especially when making a pass coverage play. You only have a few options there and no real option to cover someone on a short route. Unless it's WR1, WR2, or WR3.
Another flaw I noticed. I made a play that I called a suicide blitz I just have all my players blitz the quarterback. If the quarterback passes the ball and has a running back running an outside route he will toss to him quickly and it always ends up hitting one of my players in the helmet or it hits the runningback in the back and it is always ruled a fumble and I end up recovering every single time.
Also with that play I can block the punt about 60% of the time. I've only blocked one field goal with that play tho.
Arcade play
Arcade has always been good but against the computer you gotta adjust the sliders to your liking.
Online Play
Online play is awesome if your playing a 1 on 1 exhibition type game. There is no flaws there at all except for a few undelivered promises that EA forgot to put in. For instance if someone disconnects from the game while in progress it doesn't count.
The player that disconnects gets a dsiconnect charged to him but that's it. EA promised to fix that this year by letting you finish the game against the computer and guess what it never happened but maybe it's not functioning yet but maybe in a future patch we'll see this happen.
I have played a total of 4 games I lost 2 and won 2 the 2 games I was winning by a convincing amount which and my opponent ended up disconnecting on both occassions. Iam now 0-2 but in reality I'm 2-2 but the other games don't count cuz the other players disconnected. Not very good for league play tho as mentioned above.
Overall
Overall this game is good enough to hold me over for now. I still have to play with the sliders a little to even things but so far that seems impossible but still in the experimental stages. Overall this game I give it a 6 out of 10 scale, I'll bump it up to 7 if they fix all the bugs.
My Madden 2004 review
