Madden NFL 2004
Can Playmaker controls beat out Sega’s First-Person Football offensive?
Tags: Madden NFL Football 2004 Categories: Game Cube Reviews, PC Reviews, PS2 Reviews, Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Sep 3rd, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Madden NFL Football 2004 (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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EA has the advantage.
With Sega bowing out of college football this year, Madden is the only NFL title with an NCAA counterpart. That means if you want to play college ball and watch your seniors enter the NFL, EA Sports is your only option this year. That’s good news for EA fans, bad news for Sega fans.
Last year, Sega gained some ground against EA by offering “a more complete sim” of college and pro football, even if it wasn’t as pretty as Madden and its college counterpart. But without a college game, Sega’s ESPN NFL Football 2K4 enters the season with a limp.
Not that it matters much to EA, who have really pulled out the stops to offer a wealth of new gameplay options. From the new Owner Options feature to Playmaker audibles to the EA Sports Bio, EA’s playing the game like even Midway is a threat to their market dominance. Competition makes champions and EA has plenty of competition.
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First, let’s tackle the online mode. One of my most frustrating online football experiences came years ago while playing Sega Sports NFL 2K online. Matched up against a duo of players, I had risen to the challenge and was leading the pair, even though it was 2-on-1, in the closing three minutes of the game. Like any smart coach with a lead, I began a drive consisting of running plays and letting the play clock drain time, snapping the ball at the last second.
They ran out of time outs, I made a first down and was confident of victory. Then the unthinkable happened. Suddenly these cheaters hit pause, one of them switched over to “my team,” called one of my timeouts, then switched back over to his team again. WHAT THE HECK? It was my first exposure to online cheating and it was infuriating! I warned them if they did it again, I’d quit. They ignored me and on the next play repeated the offense.
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Finally, I hit pause and made them listen, telling them if they did it again, I’d quit the game and take the hit on my “complete game” rating. They agreed, but the damage was done. Their timeouts, coupled with my rage at their cheating resulted in breaking my offensive rhythm. They forced a fourth down, I punted and they threw a long ball in the final 30 seconds, got past my secondary and won; something they’d never have had the opportunity to do had it not been for the “hole” in Sega’s online play system.
The experience was so disturbing I think it may have been the last online game of football I played on my Dreamcast. EA’s early online system has had similar holes in it that have led to a culture of online cheating. With Madden 2004, EA Sports attempts to change all that with the “EA Fair Play Controls” feature. Trouble is, there’s still some ways around it and at times it can penalize the victim of online cheaters, rather than the cheaters themselves. It’s a good first step, but more work needs to be done.
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The big on-the-field upgrade this year is Playmaker Controls. Under this new system, which is NOT mirrored in their college game, you can change a running route or pass route after the play is called but before the snap, once you see what the defense is cooking. You can also change on the fly, after the snap.
Unlike previous control upgrades, like Maximum Control Passing, Playmaker audibles (which also show up on defense) can be the difference between stopping a play or getting burned for big yards and a score. It’s a valuable feature. Let’s say you’ve been getting burned by Indianapolis’ passing attack all game so you’ve been sticking to a lot of nickel and dime plays. But oops, as the ball is snapped, you can see it’s gonna be a run. In past years, that’d mean a potentially game-losing run against you with little ability to try to stop it.
But with Playmaker controls, if you sense a run coming, all you need to do is tap your right joystick down to indicate run and your defensive front (linemen and linebackers) will zero in on the run while the secondary stays back in coverage for the potential play-action fake-out. The system works similarly on defense and once you get used to using it, it’s hard to readjust to not having it when you go back to EA’s college game.
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Another huge upgrade is the Owner’s Box aspect to franchise mode. With this you can adjust the price of tickets, parking and food at the stadium during your home games; you can invest in advertising to maximize attendance (and therefore, ticket sales and revenues from parking and food) and even sponsor, once a season, a fan appreciation day.
Spend too much on advertising and it can be a budget buster, but ignore it and even games for a winning team will get modest attendance. You can also take more control than ever before in terms of negotiating contract extensions, the salary cap, signing free agents and rookie draftees, the draft, and most especially, stadium deals. You can even negotiate coaching contracts, not only for your head coach but for your offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators. Hiring replacements can be a task, too.
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Training camp returns but this time it works better. Rather than silly “run on a sprint track” exercises with wonky controls that are nothing like the on-the-field action, most of the activities are aimed at actual in-game activities, like tackling, intercepting, rushing, receiving and other such activities. Complete a task successfully and you’ll get bonus ability points to turn your mediocre WR into a slightly faster (or better-catching, or stronger) mediocre WR. Each training camp task can only be completed by one player, so at best you can up the stats of maybe 12 players a year. Hey, at least it works!
One of the reality-crippling aspects of this year’s Madden, however, is that it still doesn’t duplicate real NFL team roster sizes. The game caps you at an unrealistic 40 players, rather than the 47 “on roster,” 45 “active on game day” and 53 overall with the practice squad limits of the NFL. The problem is glaring from the first game when you notice that, for some reason, key members of your favorite NFL team are mysteriously missing.
It also affects the realism of the salary cap; with a smaller roster, you can pay everyone more. Another problem is the lack of a preseason roster limit of 70 or so with key “cutdown days” between preseason games. If Madden’s gonna make us play the preseason games in Franchise Mode, they should at least have realistic roster sizes and incorporate cutdowns; what fun is it to play preseason games if you’re not evaluating “on the bubble” players?
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There’s still some niggling to be done with the Franchise Mode, but the one-year improvement in the form of the Owner’s Box is such a step up, you can hardly fault the game; so, EA, please take notes on what we feel is missing yet and make them priorities for NEXT season’s Madden.
In the meantime, Madden NFL 2004 lays down a hefty “realism” gauntlet for Sega to match. If all Sega ESPN NFL Football 2K4 has is a camera trick called “first person mode,” Madden should run toward daylight unmolested. We’ll soon know.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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-- Off-season mode is a revelation. -- Playmaker control is one of those “why didn’t anyone do this before” conveniences. -- EA FairPlay controls mostly achieve intended goal. -- Owner controls the most in-depth ever on a console game. -- Great graphics and sharp new animations for greater variety. -- Slim 1.5 MB franchise save puts NCAA’s 2.5 MB save to shame. |
9.6 |
| What Doesn't | |
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-- Players imported from early anonymous “uniform number only” seasons of NCAA Football 2004 stay anonymous. -- FairPlay controls still have holes that penalize the player who wants to quit a game in which other players are cheating. -- Commentary still limited compared to Sega’s version. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| It’s hard to say whether Madden outdoes Sega’s ESPN Football 2K4 until we’ve had a chance to compare them – but Madden has set the bar high and as the only franchise with a college football counterpart this year, Madden has the advantage. | |
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Tags: Madden NFL Football 2004
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Sep 3rd, 2003 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, PC Reviews, PS2 Reviews, Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
