Madden NFL 2004

"A dissapointment"

I've had every Madden game since 1992 and I have been awaiting this one more anxiously than any other, in fact, I have been awaiting this game more than any other game period.

First off, let me say that if you have owned NCAA 2004 for the past month than you must have been pretty excited for Madden's release. Madden did not meet my expectations however. It seems like EA Sports took un-necessary steps down just to change things up a bit. In my opinion, you shouldn't change something so perfect as Madden was.

I got home from buying this game and put it on immediately. It was starting out good, good soundtrack, lots of options on the screen, and the first choice to select your favorite team.

The first time around, I put it on All-Madden and left the sliders alone just to gauge how it was going to play. I was shocked when I saw the first stupid, however minor change in the game. The field was ridiculously dark and the play selection page had an ugly new look. This doesn't really matter though. Another annoying change was the passing icons which was instead of an easily recognizable bright letter, was a picture of the x, square, triangle, and circle buttons.

That was the minor problems that were just flat out annoying, now for the bigger problems:

There has been a lot of talk of the game being too hard and I will sort of agree. The game is very difficult the first couple of times because the play is so different from previous Madden's. However, if you keep playing, you will begin to realize what will and wont work against the CPU. The passing even becomes much too easy and if you are a good player you can score 50+ yard passing touchdowns at will.

Another change is the use of the square button on defense. Normally in Madden, if you press square on defense it will do a very realistic attempt at a diving tackle. The success rate of this was very low as it should be. In Madden 2004, a press of the square button will dive between 3-6 yards and will almost always result in a tackle even against top backs like Tomlinson and Williams. Now in the real life NFL I have never seen a Corner Back chase down a Wide Receiver and dive from the 10 yards line and stop him from scoring. It's dumb and non-realistic. This game can be so ''arcade-like'' sometimes that my little brother walked in and thought I was playing NFL Blitz. This square button makes it as hard to run as its easy to pass.

There are two new features called Playmaker and Owner Mode. Playmaker if a basically pointless way to try to control the players on the field besides the ball carrier. Even when mastered this makes little to no difference on most plays

Owner Mode was very hyped and very overrated, besides setting prices for concessions, parking, and seats, theres not much else until the offseason. This mode will not provide much more enjoyment then normal but it is a nice option for people who are into that sort of thing.

Just a couple of miscellaneous thought, Good Soundtrack, GREAT Create-a-Team mode, and a cool thing in franchise mode called the trading block, this is where you list the player(s) you want to get rid of and you put the minimum you want to return and wait for other teams to offer you trades.

This game should have been NCAA 2004 with NFL teams, players, and uniforms. This game should have been NCAA 2004 minus laterals. But its not. Its a bunch of changes that hurt the value of the game because people were saying its been the same for 3 years we need a change...If you are one of those people let me just say that YOU RUINED the best franchise in video gaming

Despite all this, I still recommend that you buy this game because lets be honest...These next 5 months are nothing without Madden NFL 2004

OVERALL RATING: 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/03