Madden NFL 2004

"Not worth the cost."

I'm skipping the graphics because I am sure others will cover it more in-depth.

I rented the game yesterday, the day it came out, in an attempt to decide if I wanted to buy it.

New Features

Naturally I went straight to the owners mode, because that's what got all the hype. I was not impressed. All there really is to do there is micro-manage a team from the owner's perspective. It's not really got anything to do with football, it really belongs in a separate game that should be titled ''Sim Business''.

In real life, every franchise makes a profit. The NFL created a system of profit sharing so that each team could stay competitive specifically because they knew it bolstered the game overall to the public. It's not particularly hard to make a profit as an owner in owner mode, but it can be tedious - since you have to adjust prices and such constantly.

You can use the profits to hire coaches, but really all that does is creates more micro-management you need to do. The coaches can progress or digress in stats too, which means that now not only do you need to worry about the player stats, but you have coaches to worry about too.

You don't get any other rewards for making profit that I could see, no cards, no tokens, nothing like that. So in my mind it's really more stuff to eat my social life, and it has nothing to do with actual football.

I was not impressed.

Moving on to the other new feature, the EA Sports Bio, I found more of the same.

The Bio is supposed to be this great rewards system so that you get special things for playing other games. Really it's a marketing tool that forces gamers to buy or rent other EA products for nominal rewards.

I have EA games, including Madden 2003 and Def Jam Vendetta, Nascar Thunder, and 2003 NCAA, and others. The Bio though, completely ignores that, and only wants to recognize newer games. Well, there aren't any newer games. What about rewarding those of us that have been playing in the past?

Beyond that, the rewards seem pretty cheesy. I've checked with some people that got some of the rewards, and it seems there isn't much you can get from a bio that you can't get from the normal game (which is a good thing), and none of the cards are particularly special or potent.

I was not impressed with the EA Bio feature, and I consider it more my enemy than my friend - since it actually means we're all buying games that we can't fully experience unless we buy MORE games that we can't fully experience.

Moving away from those I'll be moving to the other new feature, play maker. It's really not that terrific in my opinion. It can be used with some success and could be helpful, but really with the speed of the game what it is a player has to know before hand on any given play where he's going to send a blocker or how he's going to run the defense and when he's going to send them after the ball. Really, this isn't something that has to be done during the game itself, it should be something we can set up prior to the snap so that when the ball is hiked, we can just play. All this does is invite the player to make more errors - or maybe get it right, but only because they already know what they're going to do on any given play. So it doesn't need to be real time or during the play itself.

I don't like the way they implemented this.

Training camp can now improve the stats of some players, but really all this does for me is make me min/max my players more, and it eats more of my social life up. I didn't really see anything wrong with the old system of progression where you just took players through pre-season and then played the year with them. This just seems like another time-eater that you now have to do to keep up with other teams before getting to the meat of the game. I don't really consider this a feature, I consider it a bigger drain on my life.

Improvements

The defense does definitely respond better, and the gameplay overall is more reactive. Handling the players is much better, and that's a good thing.

I was also pleased to see that there is now a trading block, but to be honest this should have been here a long time ago, is nothing new, and really isn't much of an upgrade. It's like someone offering me a straw with my drink and calling it a ''great bonus''. No, it's not a bonus, it's something that should have been there already - I'm just not getting screwed as much any more.

I was pleased to see that team cohesion and character matter now. I don't like the ratings they gave out, but I can edit that myself.

They finally fixed the problem with O-lines getting nailed on their stat tracking for pancakes and the resulting destruction of a normally solid line.

Other than that, I don't really see anything that could be considered an improvement or new feature for the game. They just have the other stuff set up differently now.

Improvements they needed, but failed, to make.

You can still only trade three cards at a time, or wager three cards at a time. That's sort of silly. None of the cards are worth much, so it seems to me you should be able to wager a respectable amount of cards if you want to. It also makes trading a pain in the butt.

Cards in general were really buggy last year, and this year all they did was take out most of the bugged ones, and not add any new ones. Coach cards are new, but they take up an enormous number of card spaces and really they only boost your team's awareness for a limited time. Sort of cheesy.

I think player cards still do the same stupid stuff they used to - only work for that player. So if I go in and play a Vick card with Atlanta now, and he is injured because I've updated my roster, it won't help my new QB at all. In franchise mode, where you can play 30 seasons, one can easily see why this is an issue.

None of the cards most of us wanted them to add were added. I'll leave it at that.

You can't wager tokens or trade tokens out to other players. I'm not sure why.

I believe you can still only hold 15 of any given card, and that if you have 15 of a card and buy a new pack that gets you a sixteenth, that one just goes to waste. The computer doesn't ''auto-sell'' it for you or anything.

So cards were not improved at all, and they really needed to be.

The stats still seem buggy overall. There were a LOT of bugs last year in Madden's stat keeping system. They seem to be largely present still. I haven't had time to thoroughly test this yet, but I believe your stats will still flip instead of cap, which can lead to disaster with a player you are trying to build up. Also, the computer still seems to have simple math problems. It doesn't add, subtract, multiply or divide really well - and it forgets sometimes (but not always) that pre-season games don't count in a regular season total. What happens is that sometimes players don't get credit for their yards or tackles, but do get a ''yards per game'' rating that includes pre-season games. Thus you can have a ball carrier who gets 100 yards a game, and the computer will calculate him lower than that because it's including pre-season games, but not pre-season yards.

The layout of the game, navigating the windows and stuff, still is very messy and confusing. Even to experienced Madden players it's sometimes difficult to find the parts of the game we're interested in dealing with at the time.

There's still no Hall of Fame. I'd have much rather had this than the Owner's mode.

Overall

Really, what this game has that's new isn't very good. It often even makes the game less fun.

What's not new is somewhat improved in places, but mostly not.

Some of the old problems were not corrected. I know of one bug when dealing with punts near the goal line that has existed since the very first Madden ever made - the one for Super Nintendo. It's still here. I checked it out last night.

And genuinely, they missed a lot of the improvements to the other things that they should have made. Seriously, it appears to me that they added a bunch of ''new crap'' without fixing the ''old crap'' that didn't work right to begin with. Like new features is somehow better than working features.

All in all, the only thing I feel this game offers this year is an updated roster, new antics (like the ''Sharpie TD'' clip), better control of players (in-game - and I am not referring to ''Playmaker'') and on-line play.

Is that worth 50 bucks? I don't think so. Truth be told, I found the game on sale yesterday for 30 bucks. It's not worth $30 either though, so I'm skipping the game this year.

Right now the only people who I would advise to buy it are people who play on-line a lot. I'd point out to them though that they can LAN their games together using a computer at a cost of less than 50 bucks, which is what the new game costs, and it won't stop working at the end of the season like EA's on-line play does. Still, if this is your thing, I'd say go for it - because it's the only way you're getting access to EA's server.

The rest of you though, should save your money until they make a game worth buying.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/03