When I looked at the cover of Madden NFL 2009, the only thing I could think was “wow, Madden was always pretty bad, but they royally screwed themselves over this year.” The cover boy for Madden NFL 2009 is Brett Favre, who after last season, performed his annual dance with retirement, then actually retired, then came out of retirement and was traded to the New York Jets because his team wanted to move on. I’ve seen Favre on the cover of the Playstation 2’s version of the game in both his traditional Packer duds and the ogre-green Jets uniform. EA Sports admitted the game was too far into development by the time Brett un-retired to create a version of Madden with Favre as a Jet. But a downloaded version of Brett the Jet was available! When EA Sports can’t even get the cover right, then hoo boy, the game has disaster written all over it.
I was pleasantly surprised by Madden NFL 2009. It didn’t rock me the way NCAA Football ‘09 did, and I’d still rather play that game than this one, and in fact I’d still much rather play 2K Sports’ ESPN NFL 2K5 than either of them. But this year’s edition of Madden is easily the finest Madden as far as I’ve played, and the first edition of the game in which I’ve actually felt entirely in control of all the action on the field. I’ve long thought of John Madden as being of two separate personas: First you have Madden the former NFL coach who led the Oakland Raiders for nearly a decade, winning a Super Bowl, never enduring a losing season, and sending ten players to Canton. Then you have Madden the booming, overly bombastic color commentator. Of the two, it always felt like John Madden was lending his color commentator ways to the video game bearing his name rather than the football coach. But this year, it seems football coach Madden has popped his head out of the sand to give us a pretty good football game.
Unfortunately, while the actual gameplay of Madden has taken a very dramatic upswing, EA Sports didn’t add anything new to really endear me to it. The options screen was surprisingly limited. Most of the Madden standards made it into the game, including practices, mini-games, and of course the franchise mode. What’s new are a bunch of tutorials. One helps you learn how to use the audible options to the maximum effect. This was a big help to me because calling an audible is more intricate, precise, and detailed than ever and the act of calling an audible takes you through two or three option menus. It gives you an unprecedented amount of control over your plays, and there are times when it does make a difference. But I also found it easier to play pass plays the way I always do, which is to just ignore who the primary receiver is and throw the ball to whoever I think has the best chance of making the grab. Changing who the primary receiver on a pass play officially is doesn’t really do anything.
The only new mode which merits any mention is the Superstar mode. In Superstar mode, you get to turn a rookie NFL player into the biggest star in the country. I spent a good amount of time trying this and found it wasteful and unnecessary. To its credit, the game allows you to either pick one of the members of this year’s real rookie class or build your own guy from scratch. I picked the build-a-back option. Once you’re finished filling out all the little details about speed and strength and whatnot, the game runs you through things like the combine and the draft, and they allow you to add more status points to your player. I loved being able to give answers at press conferences, star in movies, and actually win a starting job from the full-time team starter. When you get drafted, in your new hometown you’re allowed to get a new haircut and new tattoos to fit your personality. You have your own website, and there’s a city map which features all the important places where you’ll be spending time, like the tattoo parlor and the practice field. But don’t expect the city map to be accurate. My rookie was drafted by the Buffalo Bills, and being a Buffalo native myself, I know the area. One of the things I know about the area is that the Bills’ stadium, Ralph Wilson Stadium (known affectionately by the locals as “The Ralph”), stands in a virtually deserted part of a suburb, and the only signs of life in the spot come from a few gas stations, convenience stores, bars, and the college campus literally right across the street where I went to school. There are no tattoo parlors or barber shops. The closest residence is at least an eighth of a mile away.
Once the games begin, Superstar mode really crashes like a meteor. When you play games, it’s perfectly understandable if you want to simulate them all because if you play, you don’t get to pick any of the plays for yourself. The computer makes all of the selections. This makes no sense because if you’re the big superstar, you should be the one trusted to lead the team, right? More pain is added because despite the game’s mistrust in your ability to choose plays, you still have to run plays on both sides of the ball. This is just a big waste of time. To put it simply, you have to play a full game with the computer picking every single play you use. And god forbid your aspiring superstar should end up playing on a team whose style doesn’t suit his position. My rookie was a quarterback, and the poor kid played for the run-happy Bills. Exactly how is this supposed to get me noticed? At least a quarterback touches the ball on every offensive play. How is a receiver supposed to be a showstopper with the running back hogging the attention? Apparently the creators of Superstar mode forgot these inconvenient details.
The mini-games are as fun and helpful as ever, but at this point they’re getting boring. I’ve played them all in every edition of Madden since 2003, when they were cool because they were new and no other football games had ever done such a thing before. By 2005, they were still good, but as EA Sports had done absolutely NOTHING to enhance them, they were starting to get old. Now we have the 2009 edition of Madden, and I once ate a week-old bagel which wasn’t as stale as the mini-games in Madden NFL 2009. And EA Sports isn’t giving you as much incentive to play the mini-games as they did in the past; the cheerleader cards have been removed. Instead, every team gets a lame Pump Up the Crowd card.
The tournament comes with an idea that I came to love: A build-your-own-team option which features players from the Hall of Fame. While the game makes you stay under a point cap during your player selection to make sure you don’t become nearly as powerful as the 1985 Bears, you have more than enough cap space to build a great team if you’re at least a little conservative about your player selections. I spent a lot of cap points on players of average-to-good talent to fill in most positions and still had enough points to round out my roster with some of the greatest players in NFL history. I had enough points to buy YA Tittle to lead an offense which also included John Mackey and Thurman Thomas, while Ray Nitschke and Sam Huff anchored my defense. That, readers, is some SERIOUS firepower! My only complaint here is that the Hall of Fame selection is extremely limited. There are over 200 players enshrined in Canton; in Madden NFL 2009, you might get a selection of 50, give or take. A very short list of unavailable players includes Dan Marino, Jim Brown, Mike Ditka, Lawrence Taylor, Bruce Smith, Howie Long, and Art Monk. While the exclusion of OJ Simpson is perfectly understandable, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense coming from a developer which has been unafraid to plaster Juice’s likeness onto the running backs of the all-time Bills team rosters it includes in its games.
As to the way the game plays on the gridiron, one of the first things I noticed is that the game isn’t as tough on the run as it used to be. You’ll be able to average probably between two and four yards per run play, which is extremely realistic. Past editions of Madden were given glowing praise for being tough on the run, and I share those sentiments because past Maddens would have the opposing defense almost always plowing right through the offensive line and taking the running back’s head off before he got to the line of scrimmage. If you were lucky enough to actually make a gain on the play, it would likely be a single yard or maybe two. Madden NFL 2009’s defenses slip up every now and then while trying to hold off the run, and so you’ll sometimes be able to take the ball 15 or 20 yards before the defense catches up, and if you manage to break through the defensive line, a touchdown threat is always imminent, and though you won’t always get a touchdown, it’s nice to know that if you don’t it’s because you simply didn’t juke fast enough.
Passing is surprisingly smooth. In fact, Madden NFL 2009 has the smoothest passing controls I’ve ever used in a football game, including any controls in a 2K Sports football game. All those half-second delays which used to hamper the passing game in past editions of Madden are now things of the past. I had a little trouble trying to run the ball with the quarterback once the offensive line broke down, though, because I simply couldn’t find the tuck button. But even that didn’t cause me a whole lot of problems because offensive linemen are another area in which Madden has been upgraded. Sure a few players from the opposing defense will get through every now and then, but when doesn’t that happen? Generally, Madden gives you more than two seconds to hold onto the ball this year before you take a sack.
Controls have improved on defense too. The only time players have floaty controls on defense is when you’re trying to put them into a better position before the ball is snapped. And even then, it’s only a problem when you’re trying to re-position a lineman. Interceptions, however, don’t happen as easily as they do in NCAA Football ’09 so you’ll have to rely on the computer to create midair turnovers. The hit stick is still here and still a complete waste of space because you still can’t use it at a diagonal angle. The tackle button is always the best option. You’ll want to try the strip button too, but I didn’t have a lot of luck using it myself.
The graphics are great. At this point, there’s not a whole lot of difference between Madden games in graphics anymore, so if you’ve seen the last few, you’ve seen all of them. Much the same can be said for the sounds. There was a big ballyhoo over the replacement of Al Michaels and John Madden as the commentator this year for Chris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond. However, due to memory space limitations, the Playstation 2 version has retained the services of Michaels and Madden. They sound the same as ever, though their phrase list has expanded enough so that the commentary isn’t as repetitious as it was in past editions of Madden. The music, per usual, comes via a licensed soundtrack. Unfortunately, the playlist selection has gotten gradually worse ever since its pinnacle of near-perfection in Madden NFL 2003. This year we mainly hear a lot of overly loud hip hop and single-note guitar. It doesn’t fit the game at all.
It’s funny. This year Madden finally got it right. Yet I see reviewers in a lot of places only now starting to sound off about the poor controls and legacy issues that I was so happily trashing back when previous editions of Madden first came out. I wonder if I’m out of the loop. But no matter. Madden was a shocker for me this year, and I can heartily recommend it to most football junkies. I’d still rather play this year’s NCAA football game or ESPN NFL 2K5, but a case can certainly be made for Madden NFL 2009.
