Full Review

Why I review many sports games? Am I a sports lunatic? Yes. Can I live without sports? Never. This is my twelfth review and since my favorite sports player is #12 (Peter Bondra of the Washington Capitals), I decided that my twelfth review would be about a sports game.

This time I will review Madden NFL 2002. What makes football so fun? The 300-pound men tackling each other, the 60-yard throws with a perfect spiral, the tackle-breaking running backs or the cheerleaders? Well, this game has it all except for, unfortunately, the cheerleaders. All of this is delivered to you on the ultimate portable gaming system, the GameBoy Advance.

Controls: The controls are pretty difficult to get used to and it will take a long time. To hike the ball, press the A button. To bring up your wide receivers/throwing options, you must press A again, but you should run back because you will probably get sacked if you don’t. Each receiver has a letter below them, and if you wish to throw that receiver, just press the button. The options are the A, B, R and L buttons. If you hold onto the button while throwing, you throw it very quickly but if you tap, you just throw a lob. If you wish to run the ball, the quarterback automatically hands of the ball when you press A once, and then you must find an opening if you wish to gain some yards. When your player has the ball, A is turbo, B is spin, R is to jump and L is to dive if you wish to gain a few more yards before getting tackled. While on defense, L is tackle, B is turbo and A is switch players.

Sound: When you turn on the game, you get a classical: “EA sports. It’s in the game”. While on the menus, you get one song and that’s it. It’s a really cool song, and sometimes I wait a little to hear the entire thing. I’m not sure what the name of the song is, but is pretty well known and pumps me up a little. The in-game sound is decent. The crowd doesn’t say much, but you can hear players tackle each other and the quarterback yelling: “Blue forty-three, red eighty-nine, hut, hut, HIIIIIIKE!” The commentary is acceptable but you are only provided with some basic knowledge. Pat Summerall says stuff like “First and ten” while Madden says stuff like “it looks like he ran into a freight train” or “man, I could hear their helmets collide from up here”.

If you are the home team and you score a touchdown, you can press the A, B, L or R buttons to make random noises (horns blowing, whistles blowing or players taunting the other team).

Gameplay: This game is a reproduction of the football games for the Sega Genesis and Super NES. The game features two modes. The first is Play Now (exhibition) or Season (you can opt to go straight to the playoffs). You can play as any of the 32 NFL teams (including the Houston Texans), and there is even a bonus team, the All-Madden team. There are two skill levels and all teams have individual rankings. During the game, you can see that players have ability numbers and even endurance. If you just had you running back get you a 20 yard gain, his endurance will go down, and if you don’t call a passing play and opt to run him, he will be as slow as a tortoise. There are many plays in the playbook, around a hundred or so.

There are a few options before starting a game. You choose the home and away team, the length of the quarters (3, 5, 10, 15 minutes), the location (any stadium in the NFL), the weather (snowing, raining windy, fair, night, variable) and endurance (on/off). When you start the game, there is a coin toss. The winner decides if they wish to punt or receive and the other team chooses if they want to defend the home or away side of the field (the main factor is the direction the wind is blowing in).

There are some problems. First of all, running the ball is extremely hard and if there is no opening, you won’t get anywhere. Another problem is field goals. For some reason, they are almost impossible to kick. The computer consistently makes 50 yard FG, while I never make 35 yarders! To get a good kick, you must have maximum power along with the right direction, and to get this you two bars going up/down and when you press A, you must have it at the top for maximum power and in the right direction. You only have about 2 seconds to do this because if you don’t you get sacked.

I have not experienced any slowdown with this game, but the action speeds up when less than 22 players are visible on the screen. I have one more complaint. When a ball is tipped, you get this annoying animation where the ball is supposing to be bobbled by the receiver/corner back many times until the ball is dropped or someone makes a catch. But what you get is a ball, clumsily going up and down in the air. The ball is also about 4 times larger than the player at this point. It is really strange.

Graphics: The graphics aren’t as good as the X-BOX but they sure are better than those football games where the players are represented by X’s and O’s. The players are designed well, but the only way to tell them apart is by the color of their jerseys. The game is pretty detailed. The team logos are on the field, the endzone has the name of the team on it, there are some signs in the fan area (Let’s go Skins) and when you score a touchdown, you see the chains which show how much longer until you get a first down. After every play, a little table appears showing which player made the play, how many yards he gained, the current down and yards until first down.

Overall, this is a great game. I think this is a good first football game for the GBA. Congratulations EA and Budcat Creations! There are definitely some flaws but these will probably be improved in future versions. I recommend this game to any sports gamer. This game has lots of replay value (like most sports games) and the only thing it is really missing is a multi-player mode so that you could link up and play against a friend. Should you buy this game? I’m not sure because Madden NFL 2003 is already out.

Until next time,
Vadimio – the GBA reviewer