I got a chance to sit down with a shiny new PS3 and play some Madden 07 recently. I have always been a big Madden fan, I still have a copy of the first one I ever bought for Genesis back in 1993. I had high expectations for this one since it was on a system that dwarfed the previous systems I had played the Madden series on, but I was sorely disappointed.
What I found was a very sloppy game. It had a menu that in an attempt to be slick and stylish was not very user friendly. The replays and videos of your team entering and getting ready for a play were incredibly choppy, usually unable to go a second without it freezing up for a little bit. It had lost the franchise mode I had come to love and instead focused mainly on Superstar mode, which was a big disappointment.
The concept of Superstar mode itself was not bad. It's a cool to control yourself on a team and fight towards greatness. The problem with this is that there is oftentimes not much to do. I don't enjoy sitting down to a game with a controller in my hand and just watching. Since you could only control your player, that's all you really did. As a quarterback I was able to get some control but as a cornerback I lost interest very quickly. I had no control over the offense and on defense I ended up covering sides of the field that the opposing team never passed to anyway. To make this mode more frustrating, the UI was awful. Every time my QB handed off the ball to the running back he would run right into a mob of the opponent. In every game I played via superstar mode my RB only once got a gain of above three yards. It wasn't because I had a bad team either, last time I checked Tiki Barber was pretty good at running.
They tried to showcase the better look and playability of the system but that also fell short. Not only did they have choppy videos but they used terrible camera angles to show off the field. They continually used a shot that was from the entrance into the mid level seating down onto the field. The problem with this view was that it showcased how bad the audience was. I counted only three models in the entire stadium, and from that terrible camera view you could see how flat their were as well as mysterious floating pixels.
I still have hopes for the game, though not on this system. Perhaps the X-box 360 will be able to handle the graphics better or maybe the Wii innovative controller will make it as fun to play as Wii bowling. Perhaps EA having exclusives on the NFL means the end of some great games however....
What I found was a very sloppy game. It had a menu that in an attempt to be slick and stylish was not very user friendly. The replays and videos of your team entering and getting ready for a play were incredibly choppy, usually unable to go a second without it freezing up for a little bit. It had lost the franchise mode I had come to love and instead focused mainly on Superstar mode, which was a big disappointment.The concept of Superstar mode itself was not bad. It's a cool to control yourself on a team and fight towards greatness. The problem with this is that there is oftentimes not much to do. I don't enjoy sitting down to a game with a controller in my hand and just watching. Since you could only control your player, that's all you really did. As a quarterback I was able to get some control but as a cornerback I lost interest very quickly. I had no control over the offense and on defense I ended up covering sides of the field that the opposing team never passed to anyway. To make this mode more frustrating, the UI was awful. Every time my QB handed off the ball to the running back he would run right into a mob of the opponent. In every game I played via superstar mode my RB only once got a gain of above three yards. It wasn't because I had a bad team either, last time I checked Tiki Barber was pretty good at running.
They tried to showcase the better look and playability of the system but that also fell short. Not only did they have choppy videos but they used terrible camera angles to show off the field. They continually used a shot that was from the entrance into the mid level seating down onto the field. The problem with this view was that it showcased how bad the audience was. I counted only three models in the entire stadium, and from that terrible camera view you could see how flat their were as well as mysterious floating pixels.
I still have hopes for the game, though not on this system. Perhaps the X-box 360 will be able to handle the graphics better or maybe the Wii innovative controller will make it as fun to play as Wii bowling. Perhaps EA having exclusives on the NFL means the end of some great games however....
Labels: Games, Monkey-Doo, PlayStation, PS3
« Home