Up and It's Good!

Author's Rating:

Pros: More Smooth, Fun and Easy for everyone, Entertainment on all levels

Cons: Still some glitches, not many though

The Bottom Line: 
Everyone should buy Madden, It doesn't matter what year it is, it is still by far the best sports game!

Author's Review
Ya know there is always room for improvement with everything, but why rant about that? We all know this is the game to have so lets talk about why its so great and leave what needs to be fixed to the manufacturers.

Graphics
As we all know, with each new gaming model and each new year of a game the graphics get better. Yes we probably all agree that they can still do better, but as i said before everything can always get better. Let's focus on how far they have come though, i mean they definitely are starting to look very realistic. They go through a lot of trouble and preparation to make them look so realistic along with all the moves that each of the players do. They have real players wired to computers and do moves that they would normally do and then they digitize them into the game, i'd say that is pretty close to perfect.

Gameplay
I have always felt that x box and x box 360 sport games have run a lot smoother than any other gaming console with graphics equally as good. Madden has a very smooth game flow and doesn't waste your time. It shows replays and what not but if you want to skip forward and get to your next play all you have to do is press the A button to speed it up. This allows a gamer to go at his own pace and not the pace of the game as some sporting games make you do.

Mini-Games
So you don't have time to do a full game of Madden and you don't want a shortened game because those can at times be not very fun. Well Madden 08 has mini-games! This way you can get your fix of Madden by just playin around with a few games. Not only does it have mini-games but it has more mini-games than the years before. It also has made them a lot more challenging than years before as to make it more fun, at least from where i am sitting. These games can be fun and can also improve your skills just by messing around and having fun.

The Reality
Since the beginning of madden, you’ve always been able to air it out all game and just abolish teams. Not this year. This yea’s madden requires a bit more of a balanced offense. While airing it out may work most of the time still, a running game is still needed to be evident to be successful for the majority of the time. Also you may have always just thrown the deep bomb, because it worked and you scored more often then not, but this years madden has changed that. The coverage by the DB’s in the game has become a lot better and makes it so you have to throw the short routes to set up the deep routes. This is a much more realistic way to play the game, rather than just throwing the deep ball constantly and it also makes it more of a challenge.

Difficulty
The difficulty over the years has been sub-par. Never has it been so hard that you can’t win at least 97% of the games played on the All-Madden level. This year has changed that for good though. Although it is still likely you will win 95% or so of your games on All-Madden, you can bet that at least 95% of the time the computer will give you a run for your money. You use to be able to waltz all over defenses in this game but now you can’t. Defenses are a lot smarter in this edition of Madden and they act more off of what you are doing for a gameplan rather than just at random. This makes the game a lot more challenging and makes you put forth a lot more strategy to play this game, and what true gamer wouldn’t want that from a game?