Madden NFL 06

"Example #1 why you should never rush a game along to production"

Cramming. It's a bad thing for students to do before a big test. Usually, it doesn't work out so well. Same for trying to rush a game for a new system. In this case, it's the XBox 360, for EA Sports with Madden 06. And there's a lot of problems with this version.

First of all, they stripped down a lot of functionality of the Xbox version for this 360 version. Why? So you could notice the eye-popping graphics that the 360 can bring, particularly on an HD-TV. And really, why did they do that? While the graphics were good, it wasn't the reason Madden is the best football game series out there. In this version, you are limited with the basic teams from this year and you play it pretty straight forward. Instead of the tag team partners of Al Michaels and John Madden, you have just a generic radio announcer, who really is better than Michaels anyway. And considering how 2007 Madden will probably be paired up with some announcer from NBC, (no, not Costas), it was for the better. But, if you were hoping for the same version as the Xbox, just better graphics, sorry. You are going to be sorely disappointed.

If it was just that, I'd probably give it a higher rating. But the game play is just awful. It feels like you're playing pre-2002 Madden. There's just the classic mode, and some of the new buttons are given commands that aren't made aware of from the reading of the manual, either online or on paper. Some of the things you have come to expect, like the shifting of players, the gamebreaker/hit stick are there, just not as intuitive as you've come to expect.

The good thing though is that play calling is actually much better as they've saved some of the new programming space to divide play calling based on formation, what you actually want to do (run, toss, shallow throw, deep throw) or by actual personnel (something I really liked from Madden 2003, but didn't seem to carry over into future iterations). You can even let Madden or the Head Coach of the team you're playing just make the calls and you try to execute them.

If you're looking for the Madden Cards, however, it has been merged into the XBox 360's gamer profile area where gamers get points for achieving certain accomplishments in a game. This is also something you don't read in the manual, and I wish these kinds of nifty movitational notches were made more visible in the game.

AI was also scrapped. Veteran Madden players are going to find the opposing team to be easy pickings in this version as I had a fairly easy time passing and running over my opponents or picking out the offense's play and intercepting quite a few balls. And there were too many opportunities to show you how spectatualar the new graphics are on the 360. Actually, the graphics were rather subpar compared to other 360 games.

So overall, this is such a rushed up version of the Madden that it really should be just called an elaborate demo to Madden 07. And I hate demos. And it really should just put away and 360 holders should just wait for the 07 version. It is simply not worth your time.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/06