Madden NFL 2005

24 May 2005 21:05 pm

If there is one thing that EA have done right, it is probably Madden. I mean, can you remember a time when Madden was not the best selling American football game on the market? The continue to do it right as well with the 2004 of the game being arguably the best so far.

Madden 2005 isn’t a much of a jump forward as the previous version of the game but it is still an improvement. There have been many little tweaks and changes to the game, most of them to do with defence.

One of the new and coolest additions, to the game is the ability to be able to use your right stick to take down a player who is on the offensive. This means that if you can do anything from shoving them to absolutely taking them out. Finally I way to utterly waste the opposition as they attack.

Remember the offensive hot routes that were in the previous game? Well that now also covers defence, working in pretty much the same way although obviously for defensive situations.

The end result of this is that you have a much more configurable defence and it really opens the game up to new options. On the down side however is that EA seem to have spent all the time on defence (which admittedly was overdue) and not really changed much at all to the offence.

It plays out pretty much like Madden NFL 2004 did. It is not totally without changes though you can make a few tweaks to your lines and there are some new option routes added for your receivers too. Again here the AI works pretty well within the game making the feature worthwhile.

The problem with the little changes to the name is that anyone who has seasoned experience playing Madden will be able to do what they have done in the previous games and get away with it. Even on the higher difficulty settings it is easy enough for good players (not so much for myself unfortunately ;).

The various games modes have not been heavily altered either although franchise mode has seen a nice share of work. It now features EA Sports Radio hosted by Tony Bruno and can be listened to at the start of each week which features interviews with various players and coaches as well as Tony’s calls.

The mode also has what is known as “storyline central” which basically focuses around the whole media impact thing allowing you to look at both national and local newspapers and these all have an effect on the morale of your players although there are more important factors that seem to negate this.

Generally Madden NFL 2005 seems to be geared to players morale going down – if you lose a big name star, move them into a different position, don’t play them or don’t have the six creates of Evian water they requested to play spin the bottle with they will go off and sulk.

EA has also added two mini-games to add a little bit extra to the game. The first is called two-minute drill and basically involves each side having two minutes (never have guessed would you ;) to go on the offensive and score points while the defence scores points of taking them out. Then they swap.

The second mini-game involves one or two players, taking it in turn to offence and defence trying to score as many rushing touchdowns as possible within a certain amount of time. The scoring works similar to the other mini-game.

Another interesting addition to the game is create-a-fan which as the title suggests allows you to create a fan. They will then appear in the various cut scenes in the game. Other than the fact that this feature is utterly, utterly pointless (it is hard to stress how pointless it is) it can be fun to try and recreate a member of Kiss, I highly recommend Gene Simmons as your band member of choice.

Madden NFL 2005 is also playable online and from what we gather cross compatible so if you have a PS2 and your mate has an X Box it isn’t a problem. The online feature works well do with not a great deal of lag, no problems tracking stats, etc. If you have an EA Premium Pass you should be able to take part in leagues too.

As has always been true in recent times the graphics within Madden NFL 2005 are excellent. The animations for tackling and such have been the main focus for this round of improvements. That said there were a few little glitches that could have done with being worked out.

John Madden and Al Michaels are commentating over the game as always but also as usual they are pretty boring to listen to. The rest of the audio in this version of Madden is about as dreary too in the way that they sound basically the same as the 2004 game. EA has plenty of good music on there but the problem is that Green Day and Faith No More are simply not appropriate for a game like Madden.

In conclusion, all EA had to really do to bring out another excellent version of Madden was to take the previous version and improve it which is pretty much what they did. Though there can be no doubt it could have done with more improvement, Madden NFL 2005 is a solid game none the less.

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