Genre: Sports
Developer: Tiburon
Publisher: EA Sports
# of Players: 1-4
ERSB: Everyone
Also On: GBA, PSX, GCN, XBox, PC
Quick Summary
Another year, another Madden. While EA is expecting us to go ga-ga this year over the new "Playmaker" features, the bottom line is this game is still basically Madden 2002 with smoother gameplay, a decent Owner mode and a deeper online experience. Oh yea and the most overrated gameplay innovation of all time, Playmaker.
Introduction
Electronic Arts... why do you torture me so? Why do you give me titles like Medal of Honor, Lord of the Rings or Need for Speed, each of which show the true talent you guys have at making a game. Yet, at the same time, your biggest franchise, the one that transformed you from a simple sports developer into the most important company in the industry, gets yearly updates featuring almost nothing more than new animations and the default roster updates? I’ve accepted it for years but like Agent Smith in the Matrix... I can’t stand it any longer.
Madden 2004 is the latest in EA’s uber-popular football franchise. The series that is too good to keep off of the GameCube no matter how little copies it will sell and the game that outsells every XBox football franchise, even though it’s the only one without Live play. If you’ve played 2002 or 2003, you’ll be right at home here. EA has improved the online play and added voice support, buddy lists, tournaments and more play options. All are fine and dandy but there’s no reason they could not have been added last year.
Also new to this years version is the owner mode. No longer are you confined to contracts and salary cap. You can now control the costs of consessions, parking and ticket prices for your team. Even upgrade the stadium or build a new one. Move your franchise. Yes, with Madden 2004 my dreams of being able to watch a Broncos home game here in Texas came true. Rounding out the major changes this year is yes, playmaker. I won’t go into detail here, you’ll have to read on to discover what this thing you’ve heard again and again for weeks is all about.
Presentation
I am a little tired of EA not changing much of their game, but one area I pray they don’t touch is the presentation. Bar none, it’s the best presentation in the business, period, regardless of genre. Booting up the game, you’ll see EA’s now signature "EA Sports. It’s in the game." slogan and naturally it’s now being given by various NFL players & coaches.
Continue on to the menu, and you’ll be asked who your favorite team is. I chose Denver, and I get Bronco colors and photos of various Denver players. EA customizes their presentation to the individual players like no one else. The menus themselves are as good as ever, and as always you can tweak the game/controls to your own individual liking.
Graphics
I play Madden on my PS2 for the online play, so I think the graphics are fine. On XBox or GCN, however, the graphics aren’t really updated much at all, if any. Plus the GCN version suffers from nasty slowdown on kickoffs and field goals. This was a problem that plagued all 2003 versions and the GCN version of 2004 is the only one they seemed to miss.
The player models/animations are good, if just a little too similiar. Side by side against ESPN NFL Football, you can really see the one area where Sega bests EA. There’s nothing really wrong with them, but there’s nothing awesome about them either. I’d expect a 300 lb center to behave differently than Tiki Barber, but they do not. And I am a little jaded towards the "new" animations, because virtually all of them are in NCAA 2004, which I played nonstop before Madden came out and still play nonstop to this day.
Sound
EA began a good trend with Madden 2003, and it’s nice to see it continue to 2004. Rather than continue to do what they seemed to be doing, which was alternate back and forth genre wise. One year you’d get a "hard" type of rock soundtrack, the next you’d get a more "light" type of (c)rap soundtrack. Now they get licensed artists to put songs on their and it seems to be a decent mix of both. You can use a menu to turn off the songs you don’t like also. It’s not a big deal anyways, since you only hear them on the menus. But I sometimes spend an hour in Franchise mode, which is nothing but menus for me. I think I have 2 songs on their not crossed out, so it gets old fast. But it’s still a good showing to fans and a good way to hear some bands before they get overplayed and sell out on the radio.
In the game, well, this is the same old Madden you’ve played for years. There’s still way too little smack talk between players, and I just noticed with this years game that John Madden needs to shut the hell up. The commentary is the worst I’ve heard in a football game in awhile. It just seems awful this year. Madden rarely makes sense, and him and Micheals are constantly behind the action. It’s like I’m watching Monday Night Football.
Gameplay
Ok, let’s talk about the new stuff. Once again, Playstation 2 owners get exclusive online play. But this time around the online play is much better. Logging on, you’ll find the servers a lot like NCAA’s, which is good. You can now use a headset for voice chat, assuming you’re on broadband. Not a lot of people seem to use this though, and my luck is every time someone uses it they’re either assholes or just annoying. Thankfully with just a click of the R3 button you can disable it.
The Owner mode is another new addition to the series. In this mode, you basically take Franchise mode and branch it off a little deeper. First thing you’ll notice is the cap penalties are on. It makes it almost impossible to sign high rated veterans and trade them off for draft picks. Your days of signing a 95 rated, 34 year old defensive end and trading him off right away for the 3rd pick in the draft, penalty free, are over. Now when you do so, you’ll see after the off-season that Hugh Douglas has left you a little gift to the tune of about $3 million dollars off your cap. Some players don’t affect this much, others do. In my Bucs franchise I tried to trade off Simeon Rice for a quality WR but realized doing so would ruin my franchise since he has a penalty of about 25 million dollars. Ouch. Other peaks of being Owner is the ability to adjust prices. It isn’t as shallow as it sounds. If your teams not having as good a year as you’d hoped, like say the San Fransicso 49ers, your attendance will probably be down. What better way to boost it then to cut ticket prices, hold a fan appreciation day and give cheap beer? You’d better find a way to improve it too, cause if you don’t, you just might lose your team. You now sign coaches as well. You can have a coaching staff that rivals OJ Simpsons defense team, but it’ll cost you. Here’s a breakdown of the finance situation.
Ticket sales + merchandice sales = revenue
Player/coach salaries, penalties, & stadium repairs/upgrades = team cost
If the team cost is higher than the revenue for about 3 years in a row, you’ll have to sell your team. And worse yet you’ll probably end up owning the Bengals or the Bears. Finding the right blend of prices and giving fans a quality team is the only way to keep the fanbase happy. But sometimes the bastards just won’t come to the games. In which case, you pack up and move. You can move almost anywhere in the country, and even to Mexico or (gasp!)Canada.
Rounding out the major improvements is playmaker. Playmaker is a simple yet redundantly hyped feature enabling players to do the simplest things. Before the snap on offense, if you’re running sweep right and you see the defense stacked right, just nudge the analog stick left and the run will go left instead. After the snap, a scrambling QB can giude WRs to certain spot on the field with the analog stick, and running backs can call for blockers with the analog stick. Defensive players get some playmaking love too. After the snap, jamming down on the analog stick makes your secondary play run and jamming up on the stick makes the safeties play pass. Why it took over a decade for this is beyond me.
Sadly, aside from playmaker, the gameplay is virtually the same. The genius play fake cameras from NCAA are in Madden too. But the problems that plagued Madden 2003 are still in 2004. The animations are crap, and the defensive backs play like they’re starters on a pee-wee team. The defensive play is the most puzzling, because NCAA is virtually flawless on defense. If you throw a ball into double coverage in NCAA 2004, it will rarely be a catch and is probably an interception. If it’s triple coverage, just start moving your QB to the bench once you throw the ball because it WILL be an interception. In Madden 2004 though, throwing a ball into double coverage is still most likely a catch and triple covered WRs still have no problems coming up with the ball.
The problem is the animations. The DBs play the ball, they just play them in foolish ways. Rather than doing like the NCAA AI does and jump up to deflect/catch a ball, 9 times out of 10 a Madden DB will simply run like a WR and try to catch the ball. The only problem is the actual WR is jumping and catching it. You can throw into a group of 3 DBs, and the WR will most likely be the only one who jumps. GameDay and ESPN are far better in this department.
Can I please get a ferocious hit animation? When I cross the middle in GameDay, my WR needs a clean pair of shorts when the plays over. In Madden, it’s no big deal. Passes are just as easy to catch over the middle as they are in the backfield or on the sidelines. It’s ridiculous. Guess what other game is good in this area? NCAA.
In the end, Maddens gameplay is still insanely deep and probably the best there is, but it’s OLD and needs the changes NCAA got, and more. Just for fun I updated my Madden 2003 rosters to reflect 2004 rosters and played some games and aside from playmaker, I couldn’t see why I’d paid $50 for a new game. Or why I wasn’t playing GameDay or NCAA.
Overall
Old and tired? Yes. Still the best overall football game on the market? Yes. NFL wise, anyways. NCAA wipes the floor with this game and I’m almost ashamed to say that NFL GameDay 2004 is a more entertaining game, if only for a change of pace. The Franchise/Owner mode is still insanely addictive and better than anything else out there, but the gameplays just starting to feel to "been there, done that."
The Good
+ Owner mode is incredibly deep, addictive
+ Online mode is much better
The Bad
- Controls still sluggish
- Secondary AI still insanely retarded
- Playmaker feature not as revolutionary as they’d hoped
- Feels, looks and plays too much like Madden 2003, 2002 & 2001
