underdawg's Full Review: Madden NFL 07 for Xbox 360
It's funny reading "professional" reviews dance around the one cold hard truth about Madden 06 for the Xbox 360: it was one of the worst games of all time. Now that EA has had another year to work on Madden for the 360, have they improved?
Well of course! It'd be impossible not to.
In Madden 07, quarterbacks no longer point the ball at the ground before they release! You can challenge calls! And the vision cone is off by default!
But now a new plethora of problems emerge. For example, why does this game lag in single-player mode? I don't have Xbox Live but I shudder to think of how laggy it would be online! Also the presentation is terrible. Mini-games end by showing a shot of the beginning of the drill and then the loading screen pops up with no warning. The main menu now features a picture of a player on your favorite team. For example, I get to see this one picture of Julius Jones in the main menu all the time. What happened to the video clips they used to have? So this is next-gen, huh?
One of the biggest changes they made to Madden 07 is for Superstar Mode. In the 360 version at least, you just control your created player. But still have to watch the game when you're not on the field. Granted it's in 1.5x speed, but still. Why can't you just sim the game? But the real killer is the camera angle, which is placed right behind your guy. It can't be adjusted as far as I can tell. It's way too zoomed in. Positions like linebacker are almost unplayable. And if you're a safety, it's really hard to tell what's going on way back there at the line of scrimmage. I just did a play with my strong safety at training camp and Tomlinson just ran a sweep play and was down before I knew what was going on. This sucks too because I always thought it'd be more natural for the camera to be behind your guy when you're playing D but I never thought they would zoom in this much! The camera was ok for my created Left Tackle but that position got boring quick. All you do is try to pancake or cut block the guy in front of you. If someone gets into the pocket though, forget about going in there to try to protect your QB...the camera doesn't really adjust and so all you can see is right in front of you. This is also annoying when you're trying to blitz with your superstar around the LOS.
So yeah, Superstar Mode once again is an extreme disappointment although it had some cool touches. Once you select your players' genes and appearance (is Madden ever going to get a face editor?), you have to do the 40 yard dash, bench press, and a position-specific drill...for example, CB's and safeties have to cover a WR one-on-one. It's interesting, but flawed as well. For the sake of realism, a 40 yard dash time of 4.66 should not be, nay, cannot lead to a 97 speed rating. To put that in perspective, Reggie Bush has that speed rating and what did he get in the 40? A 4.31 or something like that, right? When you do the drills, all these old white men stare at you, giving these drills the real life atmosphere of a meat market (which is what the real NFL combine is), but lacks the excitement of the combine. You should at least know who the other rookies for your position stand and where you stack up compared to them. Also, some more drills would be nice too...but all of this is moot until they fix the camera angle in SS mode!!! So EA, for Madden 08...FIX THE CAMERA!
Run to Daylight is a neat feature but flawed as well. Now you can control a lineman or a fullback on running plays and pave the way for the RB but blocking is way too easy. Cut blocks occur with alarming frequency and you pretty much just have to get in the way of the defender anyway. But I suppose players wouldn't want to spend the time to learn about all the subtleties of run blocking anyway.
That's pretty much all the things new with Madden unless you care about the Gamer Level (something to track game progress for you Achievement-junkies out there) and the fact that you can play games for your Franchise online (though I think that would kid of ruin Franchise mode cause your record will mainly just depend on how good your human opponent is). The core gameplay is the same except now the Vision Cone is turned off by default. The Truck stick now can do jukes and is renamed...the Highlight Stick/ The 360 version also has a bunch of new attributes like Zone Coverage and Man Coverage for DB's and a whole bunch of blocking ones like blocking footwork and the like. Too bad all blocking is in the game is standing in someone's way! Owner mode still hasn't been included though. I always found it fun to move teams to Las Vegas and make new uniforms...oh well.
So if you're looking at Madden 07 for the 360, just know it's a prettier version of the current-gen Madden 06's or a functional version of Madden 06 for the 360. But the game has not made any significant strides forward since the Superstar Mode is a sham. So you're probably going to buy this if you have a 360 and like football, so go ahead, but don't expect anything "next-gen" except for the graphics. And even the graphics aren't that great. Fields and stuff look great but the players still look a little weird...too muscular maybe? Anyway, no one's going to mistake a game of Madden 07 for the real thing...my mom even asked me actually why Madden looked so bad! She's used to seeing me play Oblivion and Top Spin 2, I guess.
A lot of gamers seem to be either a Madden devotee or a Madden-hater. As someone in the middle, let me say that Madden 07 is a huge disappointment, and that I'll probably get around to playing it more later, but I think I'll go back to playing Oblivion. I don't know...that game just seems more...fun.
xo,
underdawg
p.s. And yes I am a huge football fan. This game is just...bleh.
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