Madden NFL 08
by Electronic Arts
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Video Game Reviews of Madden NFL 08
Customer Review: Steps backward counter the meager improvements
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm a pretty dedicated franchise mode player, so I'll just list what's changed in 08 for better and for worse for somebody like me.
Improvements:
1. Gameplay - Tackling, running, and receiving are improved. Playcalling has changed, allowing for play selection by formation, by type of play, by recently called, or by asking Madden. This throws you off at first, but you grow to accept it.
2. Style - The menus and backgrounds are sleeker, but definitely not easier to use.
3. Features - Weapons system differentiates great players by individual strengths, even allowing some defenders to read plays. More skill ratings this year are nice (all the old ones plus, for example, elusiveness, catch-in-traffic, stiff arm, route running, pursuit, etc.)
Steps backward:
1. Menus - I liked the old menu options and features. One small annoyance you find in the 2k series that has made its way into Madden this year is that when trying to make trades, once you select the players, if the trade doesn't work out and you back out to try to set up a trade with the next team, the menu defaults back to the Bears (1st alphabetical team). This is a small thing, but really obnoxious when you have to try to remember who the last team you tried was, then scroll all the way up to the next one. Also, the in-game audio and visual options are gone, so no turning on the blue line of scrimmage (you miss it more than you'd think), and no camera options. Normally the default cam is fine, but in 08 I can never see my wide receivers (even with my widescreen TV), so it would have been nice to be able to move the camera back to a wider view. AI sliders aren't available from your franchise mode menu, but I finally found them buried in the main menu, and, strangely, in the in-game pause menu.
2. Gameplay - Too many fumbles and interceptions, as everyone is saying. Now that I found the AI sliders, I turned down INTs and CPU defensive awareness (no fumbling/ball carrying slider), but I still have, in week 15, 27 INTs versus 23 TDs. Next most INTs in the league: Chris Simms with 13. Passing is a joke, for several resons. First, speed ratings seem to have almost no effect, at least for receivers, because I can't get mine to outrun ANYBODY on deep routes. I mean, they're practically JOGGING the routes. Second, as in previous Maddens, it's hard to put any touch on the ball when passing, especially short and medium passes; it's either a bullet or a rainbow. This makes it hard, for example, to get the ball to a tight end about 15 yards downfield over the heads of the linebackers, who can pick it off in mid-flight even if they're nowhere near as deep as the TE. Third, defenders still fight a lot harder to get to passes than your receivers do, since they seem to be the only ones actually paying attention to the pass. Fourth, it's hard to get the QB to do route-based passing. He throws based on what the receiver is doing at the moment instead of based on what the route dictates. Even with "precision passing" (haha), you can rarely get the QB to get the ball out in front of the receivers so they can catch in stride. Especially on long passes, the ball is often thrown at the receiver's hip. It's too easy for defenders who are behind your guys to knock down or pick off passes that should have been out of reach. In-game offensive line play sucks. In 07, linemen with decent strength would end up with like 13 pancakes a game, but now I'm lucky if more than one of my O-linemen get any pancakes. My best lineman has 4 pancakes on the season; most of the rest of the league's starters have between 40 and 80. Remember, this is week 15.
3. Experience - The retarded newspaper and email updates from 07 should have been vastly improved, not abandoned. It would have been satisfying to read about your overachieving franchise in the papers, or to get realistic emails from the coach and players reacting to last week's game. Same goes for the scouting report on the next opponent -- should have been improved instead of cut out. Michaels and Madden no longer announce the game, just a boring radio play-by-play guy. No color commentary = less immersive feel. Player ratings no longer improve during the season and only change very little in the off-season, and there's no more training camp to do it manually. So how do your young players get better? I haven't been able to figure that one out yet.
I'm mostly disappointed (I want to change my star rating to 2 and the fun rating to 1). If EA could have kept some of the features of previous versions with this one's improvements, and fixed the passing, 08 might have been great. Instead, EA continues to show an uncanny ability to tweak their game toward merely different instead of tweaking it closer to perfection.
Customer Review: too many glitches
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought game a couple of days ago and was impressed with the gameplay and the grafics in exhibition mode but once i began franchise mode it all went down hill. along with managing rosters there were minor freezes where i played around with the button and reconnected the controller and some how got it to work but by the time i made it to year 2 the game froze in before i could get the opening kickoff. Extremly upset did research online to find out about tons of glitches and complaints and ea removing such complaints from thier forums. the only good news is the are releasing patches the bad is that the patches have bugs as well meaning i wasted 60 buck don't buy.Customer Review: The Greatest Football Game Ever !!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
After playing madden 08, It's a must have and is better than ever.The Franchise Mode is more depth build a dynasty that will last a lifetime, and the online experience is the ultimate challenge for any gamer. I hd this game for nearly a month and I could not put it down. The mini-games are designed to help you during fierce online competition or a friendly game against friends. Some players are equipped with weapon atrributes such as Cannon Arm (M.Vick), Big hitter (Shawn Merriman) and Accurate & smart QB (Tom Brady & Peyton Manning). If you love Madden Footbal you will love this new edition. Enjoy (Gamertag: Dukeboi78)Customer Review: Best madden 08 out there!
Summary: 5 Stars
This Madden NFL 08 is, to me, everything that made it great. It has so many features, it can keep even the most dedicated game entertained for weeks with all the possbilities. I played both the PS3 and 360 versions, and the 360 is the only way to go. The PS3 version was slow, glitchy, locked up, and the graphics just looked inferior to the 360 version. I strongly recommend that you get this game on the 360 version if you can. It's a lot better on the 360 than anything else. About the gameplay, haven't you ever wanted to take your fav team, add a few players of your own that look like giants on the defensive line, and go and sack the quarterback? How about making your own quarerback, and receivers, and pasting the team you dislike the most by 60 points? Yep, you can do it here, and it's a whole load of fun. Get this one for the 360, it's a lot better than any other one out there.Customer Review: With Alex Smith playing like Tom Brady and Niners playing like the Patriots, something is wrong with the A.I. of this game
Summary: 3 Stars
I've played this game for 2 weeks now and it's fun when you play online or against another human being. It's the same 'ol Madden formula that you're used to seeing in previous installments with a tad more detail and a few neat features but it's the same stuff. Playing against the computer however is a DIFFERENT story. Playing under ROOKIE difficulty makes the game just that, but ridiculously easy. When you set the game to PRO which is a step above ROOKIE, the A.I. is ridiculously too good! You can tinker with the A.I. settings so that the computer plays terribly, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I was using the Patriots and played against the CPU 49ers. Now, Alex Smith isn't exactly the best quarterback in the world, but with all the A.I. set to bare minimum, Smith consistently passed for 400 yards regardless of how well I played defense! Also, the 49ers were unstoppable and made my Patriots look like an NCAA team! I thought it was a glitch and just the 49ers in this game, so I picked Detroit. Same thing, Jon Kitna was passing on my Baltimore Ravens defense for almost 300+ yards and were unstoppable at PRO level. Of all the Madden games I've played, the A.I. is incredibly inaccurate and makes any team you pick for the CPU become very invincible. It's what made me sell my copy back to an outside vendor.