Madden NFL 2004

"A solid arcade style football game."

Another year, another Madden. Tiburon has tweaked, nipped and tucked their baby once again and after about 9 months of development it's in stores.

This year, Franchise Mode has an optional ''Owner Mode'' which lets you set the prices of concessions, merchandise, ticket prices and more in an attempt to keep your franchise profitable. You can look at your Income Statement (mistakenly labeled a Balance Sheet) for your revenues and expenses during the year, see various information about your stadium, city, get information from your advisors and more. Owner Mode comes off well if a bit gimmicky. I don't think football franchises change the price of hot dogs on a weekly basis, but it's fun to tinker around with between games.

EA has finally added the option to use your own ripped songs during the game (menu screens, training camp only) and it's a welcome addition. You'll want to turn ALL of the default songs off immediately, since all the included music is terrible and has nothing to do with setting the mood for football. This isn't NBA Live, we don't want rap songs or rock wannabe bands. Personally I put some old school funk in there - some Sly & the Family Stone and George Clinton. Too funky! It's a shame your music doesn't play in the stadium during a game, either. You're stuck with the defaults which gets old quickly.

Impressive game modes include training camp, where you take the Madden Cruiser (TM) across the USA participating in kicking, passing, running and defensive drills to earn skills and tokens used to purchase Madden Cards. A Madden Card is a football card that allows you to use a cheat (such as increased agility) for one play or one quarter during your game. Some cards also unlock historic teams. It's fun to try and collect every card, and will add hours to your play time. Another mode I liked was Madden 101, where Madden himself walks you through formations and plays so you can get a feel for how the game plays (especially on offense). Before the tutorial I was losing badly and couldn't generate much offense. After Madden 101 I'm beating down opponents 55-25, 57-13, 30-7 with my Oakland Raiders.

Presentation is unfortunately poor. While playing, it never really feels like you're watching the game on television. Stats and overlay graphics are plain, and the announcing of Michaels and Madden drones on and on. I enjoy Madden, as a coach and announcer, and Michaels has his charm, but in the game they don't flow smoothly. Sometimes it feels like they're not talking about the game you're playing at all. In the opening, Michaels screams the names of the teams and phrases are obviously patched badly most of the time. The Halftime show is also poorly done -- you're treated to a group of poorly rendered cheerleaders doing the lamest 16-Bit halftime dance you can imagine. What is this, NES Play Action Football? One part of the presentation I do like is the new play-calling/replay system. Instead of cutting to an animation and instant replay separately, you watch these things while you're picking plays, which speeds up the action. Melissa Stark checks in at times after the half to give injury updates and coaches' thoughts. It's handled well, but is a blatant rip off of the female reporter of NFL 2k. Box scores, coaching records, etc are handled well, it's fun to move around in the menus and get all of your information, check pro bowl votes, coach ratings, you can spend hours going back and forth, it's all done right.

Control is another misguided attempt. On offense it's functional. You can run, connect on your passes, etc, but on defense it's another story. One on one tackling is hard, you really don't feel like you have control over your defender and you can miss your tackle very easily. I prefer the tight, responsive control in the ESPN/NFL 2K series much better than in Madden.

Overall, the game is fun. It doesn't exactly play like a sim (scores are too high, too much passing success) but it does offer many modes of play, collectable Madden cards, a revamped play-calling/replay system, the ability to save your replays, clean, organized box scores and some superficial items to mess around with in Owner Mode. No online play for the XBOX, either. Also, with the current version of Madden 2004 there's a bug that won't let you import your NCAA 2004 draft class into Madden 2004. EA wants you to send in page 43 & 44 from your manual along with your address and you'll get an updated disc after labor day (if this oversight matters to you).

Final score: 8 out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/15/03