Madden NFL 2004

"A great addition to anyone's video game collection"

Yes, I do realize that this game came out a bit over 5 months ago, but I've been busy playing it and a few other games to have time to finally do a formal review for it.

Another year, another Madden NFL football. Every year EA Sports puts out a new one, and every year they get better. If you were to just take a few quick glances to the game, you might think that it's just a small upgrade to 2003, but once you really start playing it and get into it, you realize that there is much more to it than ''just an expansion''. EA Sports has added owner mode to the franchise mode, and I will go further into depth upon that later on. Also the online play seems much more improved, though there still are a few problems with glitches and people quitting and whatnot. The gameplay of Madden 2004 when you first play it will seem much quicker than the past few seasons. In the first few games it's annoying, but you get used to it eventually and once you do, and try to play an older Madden, it seems incredibly slow.

STORY:
Just like as it is in every simulation NFL football game, your goal is to take your team to the promised land and win the Super Bowl. Your quest starts now in even before the preseason, but now in Madden 2004 you have training camp to improve your players. Drafted a speed demon at receiver that has stone hands? Use him in the receiver catch drill and try to help him develop a bit better. Got a quarterback with a noodle for an arm? With the pocket presence and accuracy minicamps, you could potentially turn him from Doug Flutie to Brett Favre in terms of arm strength. Once you go through that it's on to the preseason. In Madden 2004, if you play your preseason games, it will automatically sub out your starters at the beginning of the 2nd quarter, instead of the first half. So no longer will your starters be at injury risk (Like Michael Vick ended up this preseason).

Once you go through the season, and you get to the end of it, you have to decide what you're going to do to get ready for the next season. Take care of those retirees, think about whether you should try and sign that big free agent, trade up to get a future star in the draft, anything that can get you over the hump. Once you do all of this it's on to the next season, and the 30 total seasons that you can do for a franchise.

But that's not all. In Madden 2004 you have the option of playing with the all-new Owner Mode. Thanks to the owner mode you aren't just in control of the players and stuff, you have complete ownership control. You can choose how expensive you want those luxury boxes to be, how much it costs for a beer, overcharge for valet parking, even determine how much you spend on advertising! Also in between seasons, you can build a new stadium if you have the money, or just build some upgrades for it. If you're deep in the red, you even have the possibility of relocating to a city that would support your team better. You could get the Cardinals out of Phoenix where they draw only about 50% of the fans for a game, and move them to almost any major city in North America. Hell, you can move them to Alaska even (Like I did.) If you do choose to build a new stadium or relocate, you are the man in charge of building the new one.

In create-a-stadium, you can pretty much build your stadium however you want. You can choose if you want stairs from the crowd going down onto the field, figure out where those luxury boxes go as well. You also can pick what is over the stadium. You have about 5 different roofs if you're building a dome, and if you're having it all natural, you can pick how many lights there are. You get to choose how you want the grass, or whether you want turf. You can choose the endzone designs as well, and even pick what you want for the background beyond the stadium. You really can make some interesting stadiums with this in Madden.

GRAPHICS:
The graphics of Madden 2004 are absolutely gorgeous. Personally, I think they're the best in a sports video game yet, and I have played every game out for this NFL season. The player designs are great again like always, the players faces however don't seem to look as good as they did last year. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like they aren't quite as good in that department as last year. The other things added though more than make up for it. EA Sports added different types of helmets now, also they added dreadlocks and long hair for players. So now you can see Peyton Manning with his helmet with the strange facemask, and Ricky Williams (before he got his head shaved) with the dreadlocks.

SOUND:
The main reason that this isn't great, is just because sometimes Madden says things on here that are too dumb for even Madden himself to say. For example, Al Michaels might say how one team has scored 24 unanswered points if you score near the end (or anytime in the game for that matter), but it really doesn't make a lot of sense for Madden to say, ''With they way they're playing right now, they could score a hundred and twenty-four points!'' when there's about one minute left in the ball game.

The commentary overall on Madden 2004 is very solid for the most part. Madden and Al seem to coexist more with what they say on this than in last years edition. They again talk about the key players before the game, but they do seem to focus on the quarterback a bit too much in this. There still is the tiny problem with them not being able to say a few of the names, but that doesn't happen too often. In fact to counteract that, they added some of the names from NCAA. It actually will pronounce ''Winslow'' if you imported Kellen Winslow from NCAA and threw it too him. Madden still has his wacky maddenisms in this, including the now famous, ''Ninety percent of the game is half mental.''

CONTROLS:
The controls of Madden 2004 are the exact same as they were in 2003 and 2002. So if you have experience with those, you'll get them here. The main addition to Madden 2004, control-wise anyway, is the Playmaker control. With the playmaker control you can in the middle of the play control your receivers downfield. Say you're scrambling out to the right and you see an open patch in the defense, with playmaker you can point a receiver towards that spot and they will go there and you can hit them for a good gain. Also you can use it to control your blockers. If you're in the open field with one blocker, you can use playmaker to point in a direction that you want him to block. So if there is a defender that seems to be closing the gap, point the blocker in the general direction, and voila. Playmaker is at it's most useful however, before the play. With playmaker you can switch to which side you're going to run the ball without even having to flip the play. If you see the defense crowding the right side, use playmaker to switch where you're running to the left without having to call an audible and potentially give away the play. Playmaker actually is a very useful tool in Madden 2004.

REPLAY:
You'll want to keep playing Madden 2004 over and over till 2005 comes out in August. The franchise mode should keep you busy for a long long time, plus online play is great. Unlike most games, Madden does not actually lag too bad if you play someone with dialup. I figure EA Sports realized that Madden is their best selling game, so they would have the best servers they possibly could for it. Be warned though that there a lot of people that try to cheat online. Just make sure that you find someone that will play fair and you'll have a fun time. EA Sports kept the Madden cards again in 2004. They seem a lot easier to get all of them this year, but maybe that's just because I played it a lot more this season it seems...

FINISHING THOUGHTS:
Madden 2004 is much much more than just updated rosters for Madden 2003. EA Sports added enough in this to make it an entirely different Madden experience. The EA Bio that EA Sports added to all of it's sports games for this year is interesting. The more you play any EA Sports game for this year, it can help you get rewards and unlock things in other ones. It's actually really useful if you have a bunch of EA Sports games like I do (Except for basketball ones...)

FINAL SCORE:
10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/04