Techlines Today

Knee jerk review on Madden 2007

By Adam Myers ⋅ August 23, 2006 ⋅

I obtained the latest release of Madden Football, just like I do every year. Some would say that is slightly pathetic – and a part of me can agree – pandering to whatever EA Sports decrees as being worthy of $50 and new box art. However, good news and good times, I have begun to see the light that most other gamers have already touched upon – Madden 2007 is the latest in a long line of customer milking by Electronic Arts. What do I mean? How about this:

• Graphics and gameplay are pretty much the same as always. No upgrades.
• Too much spam on the screen now. You can hardly see the field with all of the damn control pop up screens.
• They changed the kicking which didn’t make it better or worse.
• Superstar mode is still dumb and a complete waste of time.
• Loading times at the “trade block” screen and others take way too long
• New run controls are basically the same. The new blocking mode is lame, you are better off controlling the RB than a blocker
• Reggie Bush is pretty much unstoppable not unlike Vick was a few years back, or Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in the classic TecmoBowl series. His speed, acceleration, agility, catch, run, etc are all pretty close to 99.
• You can edit players attributes, so you can fix what you don’t agree with, which is nice
• The same glitches that drove you nuts on the previous version weren’t fixed
• In franchise mode you can do a better job with scouting the combine, as well as workout players before drafting them, which is a nice touch

And yet, I’ll still lose countless hours to the game. Maybe next year will be different?