In its 14th year, Madden NFL Football once again proves its the #1 selling Pro Football Franchise. With awesome in-game graphics, depth and presentation, it's easy to see why Madden NFL 2004 continues it's dominance in the sports gaming industry. Features include an all new Playmaker Control, all new EA SPORTS Bio, in-depth Owner Mode options and improved online play for your PC, Xbox, PS2, Playstation, Gameboy Advanced and Gamecube consoles.

EA SPORTS has enhanced the online competition with it's continuance of online tournaments, a new ranking system, real rosters, Quick Match to connect you with an opponent close in skill, EA Messenger for online messaging with friends, and voice chat which requires a USB headset (supports the Logitech USB headset) and broadband connection (EA SPORTS Talk does not support Modem connections).I like Quick Match because of the fact you can play people closer to your skill without worrying about getting clobbered by a more experienced gamer.

You can now play on an even field with EA SPORTS Fair Play settings, cheating has been nearly eliminated and only those who complete full games get rewarded. Cheating is cool if you're playing verses the cpu, but when you cheat verses someone else it tends to take the fun right out of the game for the other player who plays without cheating.

New to the scene is the All New Playmaker Control. Playmaker is a revolutionary new feature that allows you to control players off the ball, change receiver routes pre-snap and during a scramble, direct blocking down field during a run, or read the opponents offense to deliver a bone jarring tackle or make that game breaking interception. If you notice one side of the defensive line is weak and your running back hasn't had many places to run, call your playmaker to the side that's favorable to your running game. The list of features new to the game continues to grow with the All New Owner Mode. Owner Mode allows you to hire your own staff, set ticket prices, build your own stadium or upgrade your current one to make it "State of the Art". Also, you can reward key players with signing bonuses and boost player attributes in Training-Camp drills. Keep track of your teams revenue and fan support. You can rename your stadium using a name a sponsor gives you, or to a name of your choice and relocate your team to another city to try and attract new fans to revive your fan support. Fans are the key to your teams cash flow, the more fans you have supporting you, the more cash you have in your pocket for off-season changes to your staffing and stadium upgrades. Create a player looks even better with the new player accuracy details like dreadlocks, tattoo replicas, and four new helmet styles. Who says you can't play in style? Play books have gotten better as well with loads of new trick plays, multiple formation variations, and the most in-depth NFL playbooks from all 32 Head Coaches in the NFL and officially licensed Assistant Coaches which makes for more realistic play calling. Yet another new is the EA SPORTS Bio. The EA SPORTS Bio rewards gamers for playing multiple 2004 EA SPORTS titles. Your EA SPORTS Bio tracks time and date of accomplishments and is a memory card based system. The more time you put in, the faster you rise to the next level. When you reach a new level, you may unlock a game-specific reward. Some rewards are bigger than others, it all depends on the level you achieve. Training-camp drills boost up players during franchise mode in the off season, up to 9 players can be updated. This is a good feature, you can raise your rookies faster or make that "bum" on your roster more useful. There's an all new "Horse Trailer Player of the Game" just like in the NFL, and signing bonuses that emulate the NFL's real salary cap system. The Horse Trailer Player of the Game slightly resembles the original "player of the game" that was in previous titles. Madden cards return with a little twist...NEW Coach cards!! There are 5 types of cards total, see if you can get them all. No Madden game is complete without a killer soundtrack, artists include: Bubba Sparxxx, Killer Mike, Bone Crusher, Unloco, blink-182, and many more.

Of all the Madden games ever to hit the video game industry, this one in particular takes the cake. I've spent many a night and had many a sore finger from playing my brains out, that's how good I feel this game is. They left out a feature that was in Maddens' previous title, Madden 2003, which I feel they should have kept and included in Madden 2004. Mulligans. I never personally felt the need for them, but for those who'd like to take back that incompletion on 4th and 12 and are down by a touchdown late in the 4th quarter, it could come in handy. If there's one thing I think that should be changed, it's the "challenge play" option. When challenging a play, there should be more options to choose from, to be able to challenge everything that can be challenged like in the NFL. Ie: It should allow challenging fumbles, incompletions / completions, touchdowns, etc. Everything that can be reviewable should be reviewable.

Overall I give this game a 9.5 rating. If any of you out there love playing Madden Football like I do, I'd suggest running out to the nearest Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy or your local Mall and picking up your copy of Madden 2004.