Another issue is with the fatigue. No matter how many consecutive plays you hand the ball to your running back and no matter how much you turn on turbo, the fatigue meter never drops on screen. EA has said on message boards that fatigue is there, but the meter doesn’t reflect this. If it’s there, it’s not implemented well, as I can run over and over again and it does not seem like there is any sort of performance hit on the back.
Playing the game online was not as good as I had hoped. During one of my online games, Madden said that my opponent had dropped the connection, although we were still talking to each other over our headsets. We both had the same problem and it was rather bizarre. I only encountered the problem once, but it was odd enough to make note of here. There are still no leagues available unless you create it manually. One nice new online feature is the ability to have a ‘live opponent’ in your franchise so you can play an online game and have it count in the franchise mode. That is a fantastic idea.
The Madden Gamer Level has some potential; however to me it feels like it was something added to take the sheen away from the 360’s GamerScore. The achievements are much more difficult than last year’s game (no scoring a touchdown for 30 points this time around). This year’s Madden carries over your last year’s GamerTag statistics, which is a great idea.
Madden 360 stands at the top of the pack from any other version graphics-wise; it’s certainly the best looking football game you’ve ever seen. It is drop dead gorgeous. The grass is beautiful; the stadiums and players look amazing. There is an issue that I have with the score/down/distance ticker at the bottom of the screen. Someone decided that it would be a great idea to have an LED like background with pixels lighting on and off throughout the game. It makes reading the ticker very difficult at times. There’s also another pretty big gaffe – there’s no way to see the number of timeouts your opponent has! They aren’t on the ticker and aren’t on the playcalling screen. It’s a terrible omission.
The audio has its moments, although I have to say I am not a fan of the EA Radio play by play. Quite often it seems to just repeat the PA announcer; and in fact, when down and distance is announced it can sound like an echo. It’s an interesting idea to make it sound like a radio broadcast – but it really doesn’t work here and believe it or not, I’m actually wishing I could hear Madden and Michaels. After all, even on the Sega Dreamcast we had a two man booth and the EA Radio just smacks of lameness. I can understand the rush to get it done last year, but this year they had time to record something better and they didn’t. The on field audio is very ESPN NFL-like with trash talking galore, which is a nice touch.
As far as this game rates versus my expectations of a football game on the 360, it is a major disappointment. I expected more – online leagues, prior generation features brought to the 360 as well as the eye candy. I only got the eye candy. If you are comparing it solely against Madden NFL 06 for the 360, it’s a much better game. Personally this year, I prefer NCAA to Madden, but your mileage may vary. Overall, I was disappointed yet again with Madden but with no other NFL options available, it will probably tide you over for another year. I guess it could be worse (like Madden 06). - Dan Clarke.
