Games and Films Blog

Two decades is a damn long time, and that’s how long Madden NFL has reigned supreme in the realm of simulation football videogames. The franchise has had its ups and downs, to be sure, but in general, EA has delivered a quality product every year since 1988. Madden celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and for one-fifth of that time period — the last four years — it has been the only officially licensed pro football game on the market.

So, cover athlete fiasco aside, how does Madden NFL 09 fare against its EA-developed brethren from the previous 19 years? Is it another mere “roster update” to a franchise that many complain is getting stale, or does it shake things up enough to provide a great football experience? Hit the jump for opinions from two longtime football fanatics, myself and Brad Nicholson.

Madden NFL 09 screenshot 1

Madden NFL 09 (PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, PSP, DS, Xbox)
Developed by EA Tiburon
Published by Electronic Arts
Released on August 12, 2008

Samit avatar
Samit Sarkar (PlayStation 3 version)

After the immense disappointment that was Madden NFL 08 (on the PS3), I was ready for a fresh start. I love my Madden, and I was eagerly anticipating this year’s release, especially after hearing about all the improvements and changes EA Tiburon was making to the game. Unfortunately, the finished product doesn’t quite live up to the hype, but it’s definitely worth checking out.

Last year, I picked up the PS3 version of Madden 08, and it was visually inferior to its 360 counterpart in a number of ways. While the 360 version was locked at 60 fps, the PS3 version only ran at 30 fps — sometimes. Slowdown was pervasive, and I just couldn’t deal with it. In this day and age, there’s no excuse for delivering a notably lesser product when the two platforms are supposed to be (roughly) equivalent, and EA finally understood that this year. On my PS3, Madden 09 runs at a silky smooth 60 fps, and this game in motion is truly a sight to behold. I never experienced a hint of slowdown throughout the entire game, and that’s saying something, considering last year’s mediocre effort.

One of the things EA Tiburon revamped for 2008 was the tackling engine, and it shows. Combining “canned,” motion-captured animations with some procedurally generated movements, the engine produces the most fluid, lifelike football movements this side of ESPN. Gang tackles look painful, and they finally work as they should. In past years, once a tackling animation was in progress, any other bodies would just bounce off the two players involved in the tackle. Now, tackle animations have no pre-determined result — if you’re quick enough, you can even break free or control which way you fall after you get hit.

Madden NFL 09 screenshot 2

Here’s an example of how things can play out in Madden 09. Let’s say you call an outside run. A cornerback comes at you from the right, while a linebacker barrels toward you on the left side. The CB hits you first, sending you reeling toward the middle of the field, and then the LB smacks into you, forcing you back to the right (and forward, if you’ve kept your feet moving). It may not seem like a big deal, but anybody who knows a thing or two about football will realize that this kind of scenario, which was physically impossible in a Madden game until now, is vital to accurately recreating the sport in videogame form. This isn’t just relegated to tackling, though; receivers can now bobble balls, which makes for some pretty spectacular catches.

The graphics have also undergone a major overhaul. Player models look better than ever, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re actually differentiable from one another! In other words, undersized defensive ends no longer look like offensive tackles. In addition — and this will sound trivial until you see it for yourself — grass looks loads better than it ever has. The turf has been retextured, and it looks fantastic. Along with the field, vast improvements have been made to weather. In past Madden games, you’d have been hard-pressed to tell the difference between a snowy field and a normal one, because the weather engine just didn’t have the horsepower to really recreate a blizzard. Now, if you select “heavy snow” as the weather for a game, the visuals will be transformed — the game takes on a cool bluish hue to reflect the frigid temperature, and snow piles up on the field only to be shoveled away (on the yard lines, that is). You’ll even see a mess of footprints created on each play as the players move around.

Fair-weather games also benefit from upgrades. Your players will get noticeably dirtier over the course of a game, with grass and dirt stains soiling their jerseys. However, EA Tiburon didn’t quite go the extra mile here. Footprints appear in the snow, but inexplicably, there aren’t any “body prints” when players get tackled to the turf. It’s a rather glaring omission that doesn’t make sense. And while the condition of jerseys will worsen throughout a game, there isn’t any perceptible field deformation — it might be double overtime, but the grass will be just as green as it was at kickoff.

Madden NFL 09 screenshot 3

There’s one last visual change that EA made, and it’s a hugely successful one. In all previous football videogames, I found it difficult to keep all the on-field action in view due to the camera angles that the games employed. Madden 09 introduces the ActionCam™, and I can’t really explain how it works its magic, but I can say that it is by far the best camera in the history of football videogames. The only way one of your receivers will be caught off-screen is if he runs a quick out route, and you happen to have rolled out all the way to the other side of the field. There are also special angles for breakaways (when there’s nothing between you and the end zone but the open field, the camera zooms in to follow you to paydirt) and big hits (a jarring shudder of the camera).

Madden 09 also makes a colossal upgrade in the audio department: the lame “radio announcer” who has been calling the games since Madden 06 on the Xbox 360 is gone; in his place, the NFL on NBC duo of Tom Hammond and Cris Collinsworth does a wonderful job. Hammond handles the play-by-play, while Collinsworth provides analysis. The calls provided by Hammond are serviceable — he’s nothing to write home about, but he gets the job done, even though his constant reminders that the game is brought to us by EA Sports quickly get annoying. But the real star of the show is Collinsworth. I’ve always enjoyed his work as an analyst, and he proves knowledgeable as well as entertaining in Madden 09. One of my favorite lines came from his discussion of how a running game helps a quarterback do his thing: “This running game has become a BFF of this quarterback!”

The commentary is mostly spot-on — of course, there’s the occasional missed call, like Hammond saying that you got “stuffed” with “not much room” on a five-yard run, but those are exceedingly rare. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of repetition after playing a few games, but until text-to-speech technology gets to the point where commentary can be procedurally generated in people’s voices, we’ll just have to deal with that. Overall, though, Hammond and Collinsworth are infinitely better than the radio guy from the past few games.

Madden NFL 09 screenshot 4

But that’s not Collinsworth’s only analytical role. In a brand-new feature for Madden 09, dubbed “BackTrack,” he gets to truly strut his stuff. BackTrack is a truly brilliant addition to the franchise: essentially, after you make a serious mistake in the passing game (i.e., getting sacked or throwing a pick), Collinsworth will take a look at what went wrong and tell you how (or if) you could’ve prevented the error. This is complemented by a visual overlay of large arrows to open receivers, who will be highlighted on the replay. There’s more, though — Collinsworth will even show you the play that you selected, and its NFL success rate against the defensive playcall. It’s a comprehensive tool to help gamers become more adept at picking apart defenses with their quarterbacks, Peyton Manning-style.

Category: Uncategorized by Joe Li