underdawg's Full Review: Madden NFL 2008 for Xbox 360
Madden 08 for the 360 is the first next-gen version of the football game that's finally playable. If that makes you cream your pants, then you'll love this game. It seems that every "pro" reviewer feels that way. (Also, it's strange that ALL their reviews talk about the SAME EXACT THINGS and omit the SAME EXACT THINGS...) I'm just thinking that it only seems so great because 06 and 07 for the 360 were so bad...
Smooth...but not smooooth
The main difference is the smoother gameplay and the fleshed out features. For the first time in 360 history, Madden players look normal when they run...but am I supposed to go crazy because the bigwigs at EA Sports finally figured out how to make a running animation? Or finally made it 60 fps? There are lots of new animations in 08 actually, which are nice, but I think this should've been happening every year. It's nice that you can finally hit receivers in mid-air and that receivers making sideline catches will somewhat drag their feet to stay in-bounds, but the latter animation still looks weird, and EA still hasn't got the throwing animation right. I was hoping they'd do something like capture individual throwing styles from Byron Leftwich's obscenely huge windup to the quick release of a Romo or Manning, but this game is FAR from doing that. Individual running styles would be cool too so you can see how Tomlinson runs smooth and slides off contact while an Adrian Peterson runs upright and is going to be done by the time he's 26 or how Marion Barber III runs like his pants are on fire, but that's a pipe dream at this point.
Right analog stick musings
The Hit Stick is now 2.0 which allows you to take out a ball carrier's legs, which allowed for one really sweet play when I was playing my brothers in an exhibition...the Cowboys' version of "The Tackle" with Romo taking out the legs of a defensive player, causing a fumble, and preventing a sure 6 points. So HS2.0 is nice, but it's nothing really crazy. I'm happiest with the new gang tackling (although tacklers still sometimes slide off the ball carrier once someone else goes in for the tackled) and Highlight Stick...jukes actually work now, which means I don't have to spend Franchise Mode looking for a power back, and which also means that there's a point to using Julius Jones (since he can't break tackles). This also means that bouncing and inside run to the outside finally looks right!
No wonder Kelly Rowland didn't marry Roy Williams!
The graphics in the game are nice, but not too much better than 06. The big difference is the animations, not graphics. So while it certainly blows the current-gen ones out of the water, it's not anywhere close to looking like a real football game. Still, there have been some subtle changes. In 06, no Dallas player's face in the game looked realistic except for Larry Allen. Now Roy Williams in the game looks like Roy Williams in real life...if he were 25% alien or something. None of the faces look quite right...
Remember when?
Owner mode is finally back and so many pro reviewers are orgasming over the fact that you can relocate the team...while that is nice, you could do that back in Madden 2004. To get an idea of how long ago that was, that was when Mike Vick was a promising young QB that many of us thought could become a good passer as well as an exciting scrambler and good citizen. I mean, he hadn't even said, "You can't criticize me" yet. He wasn't even Ron Mexico back then! So, I'm not impressed. But owner mode is finally back except you can't adjust how much beer will cost in your stadium or anything like that, which I never cared to do anyway...
Weapons are dumb
Now people have been making a huge deal about the Weapons in this game. But they suck. Take Speed for example, if a player is fast enough, he gets the Speed Weapon icon. But what does that really do? If a player's speed attribute is high enough, he'll get the weapon. Say the cutoff is 96. So is the player with 96 speed who is a Speed Weapon that much faster than someone who's a 95? No. But one's a "Weapon" and the other's not. Big Hitter, Brick Wall Defender, and all of these weapons depend on arbitrary cutoffs. I preferred the Roles system of the current gen 07, where a player would get the Enforcer role not because of some attribute cutoff, but because he had a certain number of big hits and forced fumbles the previous year. And I liked how certain Roles could make the people around you better. A Deep Threat could increase his QB's arm strength, which might be far fetched but a Shutdown Corner would increase his teammates awareness, which is certainly true. And gone are the roles like Mentors, which would increase young teammates' awareness, etc. Weapons are just a dumbed down version of Roles, and the pro reviewers applaud EA for doing this? Unbelievable.
AI musings/whining
AI has been revamped but saying the AI cheats might be more realistic. In the Xbox Madden 07, I played on All-Pro with the AI sliders set to 100, but in 08 I'm having a LOT of trouble on just All-Pro. I've been throwing lots of picks and while some are because I led the receiver too far or because I threw off my back foot, some are just a result of defenders having eyes in the back of their heads. The long bomb also seems impossible to throw (although that's what I thought when I played 2006 for the first time too). The running game is also tough, but that's never been my strong point. And I refuse to play on Pro. I'll update this review a month or so from now to let you know how I've adjusted to the AI.
Not quite Super yet...
Finally, Superstar Mode lets you sim when you're not in the game, but creating the player is a chore. You have to do the 40 yard dash, bench press, and a position drill. First of all, it's dumb that you do only ONE position drill. Second of all, the drills don't translate into ratings well. No matter how badly I do in the coverage drill with my created SS's, my man and zone coverage attributes are 88. If I let a few touchdowns, then my TACKLE rating suffers! Also, sometimes I create a player that gets crazy break tackle attributes (like elusiveness, juke move, spin move, etc)...that's not a running back! It was a QB who wasn't even much of a scrambler! And I certainly didn't break any tackles with him in drills. Third, I always have to do these drills with the Bears, which makes creating good players on offense hard. And I don't know why I have to do this with the Bears since I put the Cowboys as my favorite team. Fourth, some of the drills suck. The QB drill has only about 5 different sets of route, and you don't get to pick, so good luck completing a pass when you're on the defense's 4 yard line and all your receivers are running go routes...against the Bears D. So yeah, simming and better camera angles are quite nice, but I still haven't been able to create a player to my liking yet.
Fin
There's so much to talk about, but Madden 08certainly has more flaws than a lack of online leagues and a plethora of fumbles, which is what all the "pro" reviewers claim. For example, injuries. Julius Jones gets injured in 80% of the exhibitions I've played. I've also talked about plenty of other flaws. For making a playable Madden for the 360, EA gets no more than 3 stars from me. This would've been a good Madden 06 for the 360. But taking three years to make a decent Madden is simply not acceptable and certainly doesn't make me cream my pants.
If you think this is a 5 star game, you need to stop being a EA fanboy and pull your head out of your butt. Seriously.
September 13 Update!!!
Franchise mode is annoying me more and more. First of all, in this game, all the menus seems to take a split second or so to load...and this gets quite annoying, especially in the offseason, where EVERY free agent you sign takes a while to load when you sign them. And I'm someone that usually signs EVERYONE manually, even the scrubs. Sometimes I've hit gold on a few of them. But I can't take spending 10000000 hours on the offseason, so I pretty much let the computer do it. Lame.
I've figured out to play a little better in the game.
1. Have a running game.
Unless the game is really really important (like I'm playing a friend who's good or the playoffs), I tend to neglect the running game and just air it out. It seems that in this game, you actually need to run. Runs up the middle still work better than sweeps and stretch plays.
2. Be Chad Pennington.
Dink n dunk your way down the field! Because it's hard to throw deep, quick slants, hook, drag, and out routes are your best friends!
3. Throw deep when you can.
It seems nearly impossible to throw deep into double coverage. So my advice is to spread the ball around, have a running game, and maybe send your deep threat in motion, all in an attempt to get single coverage on your guy. When that happens, I can complete bombs to Calvin Johnson with Drew Stanton fairly well. Maybe 60$ success rate.
In double coverage? Maybe 5%.
More advice as I play more. Gah, I should be studying for LSATs...
Update 9/13
Okay, so the main problem I have is that it seems like my o-line sucks whenever I play. I get sacked like crazy in Franchise mode, and I know the Detroit Lions line isn't all that, but they're rated mostly high 80's, so I SHOULDN'T be getting sacked within 3 seconds. Seriously, I don't hold on to the ball all that long! Plus, sometimes if the rush is coming and you press a button to get rid of the ball right away, the CPU controls your QB instead and moves him to avoid the rush. Which leads to me getting sacked because it takes me a second to figure out what's going wrong, then the receiver's not really open anymore, and then I have to go through my progressions AGAIN, and then...sack. Seriously, do I have to play like Chad Pennington and be a Checkdown Charlie?
But then my friend pointed out what's probably the problem. I'm impatient when I play, so I hike the ball as soon as possible, and this, we think, leads to the d-linemen jumping the snap count and getting a great push. I've tried using hard counts a lot now, but they're frustrating because they lead to encroachment about 50% of the time (and it's the LE doing it 90% of THOSE times), and false starts around 10%. This leads to cheap yards I don't want, and it takes forever for the ref to make the call and for me to get to another play. But I DO get better protection, and most of my sacks then are because I was basking in my protection and now holding onto the ball too long. Those sacks are my fault and I can deal with it.
But I was tired of all the delays, so now I'm just trying not to hike the ball right away and just wait a few seconds sometimes before hiking the ball. I'll keep you guys posted on how this works. Also, this is now probably the longest review I ever wrote.
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