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Madden 2004 Review |
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Madden 2004
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Theres no confusion as to why the Madden NFL Football game series has sold more than 30 million copies over the past 14 years and made its way to become a guaranteed best seller for Electronic Arts, its publisher. With the release of Madden 2004 this historic game series isn't fighting to become the best anymore, each year it just improves upon itself as the best console football game.
The main buzz around 2004 was the greatest new aspect of the game, they've finally stepped it up a notch and don't only allow you to edit your teams players and rosters, but now give you the ability to own your own franchise. In franchise mode you get to make all of the decisions an NFL team owner would make, higher and fire coaching staffs, create new stadiums, and even set ticket and concession prices to bring in revenue to pay your players salaries. Lets say you aren't having much success in a city, in franchise mode you even have the option to pick up and move the team to a new location to make a fresh start.
Before the season starts you also get a chance to test your skills in preseason drills, by completing these preseason camps you get an opportunity to add skill points to your players, if you do well then you'll be able to increase a players speed or strength. There are several drills, drills for quarterbacks, runningbacks, linebackers, linemen, punters, kickers, and anyone else. This is probably my favorite part of this game, because not only do you work on these drills before the start of a season, but there's an entire section of the game dedicated to just practicing these drills and getting the highest score for each.
There of course are also a great deal of advanced game play features included that you can use to separate yourself from your friends if you're playing multiplayer. The ability to call audibles will allow you to entirely change the play you're going to run if you see a hole in the defense, or you could simply call a hot route to change up the routes that your receivers run. Also if you choose to you can send a player in motion on the fly to stack blockers to one side or to free up a receiver. If the game is running thin and you're trying to make a last second comeback, you can easily run a no huddle offense or spike the ball to stop the clock. This doesn't just apply to offense, there are several defensive advanced game play features as well. Have your line clog the holes for the run, shift your linebackers into position, or change your coverage on the fly to shut down the passing game.
The biggest new advanced game play feature although is the Playmaker option. This feature allows you to control multiple players at once on the field. For example you can run a lead block with one player with the right thumb stick, and follow up behind him with the ball with the left thumb stick. If you see a gap in the defense during a play, the quarterback can point in the direction he wants a receiver to break off to and complete a long pass. If you're running the ball you can also use the opposite thumb stick to change the blocking assignments of the offensive linemen if you're making a cutback. These aren't the easiest things to execute but they give you a massive advantage and once you perfect this ability your offense will be hard to stop.
This definitely isn't just Madden 2003 with updated rosters, the game has dramatically improved in game play, it's definitely the most advanced football simulation on the market. The graphics look sharper each year when a new version is released, the character detail is amazing and the background is slowly getting more realistic. Model behavior has also been improved dramatically, if you recall sometimes when playing Madden 2003, players would just run into each other and fall over. In Madden 2004 a host of new animations have been created to make tackles look more realistic, now you can actually grab onto the jersey or shoulder pads of a player that has broken free and drag them down from behind, push them out of bounds, or grab them by the ankles, no matter what the situation is the models simply look more natural than ever before.
The soundtrack is pretty good on this game, the music is all fairly fitting but just like any game you'll eventually get pretty sick of it, which is alright seeing as the X-Box allows you to store whatever music you want on the hard drive and substitute it in. Of course there's the wonderful announcing of Madden himself, I don't mind listening to the guy on Monday night football when an actual game is taking place, but listening to the same twelve comments over and over again on a simulated video game does get old, so i suppose you could deactivate that too if you like.
Overall the game is pretty good, if you're a football fan you'll think it's great, if you played the other Madden games then you definitely are going to like this game, it's simply the best football game there is. Even if you're like me and don't really get into football games, you should still be able to play and enjoy this game.
Review By: Travis Parrott
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