Have no fear, fellow FullHealth denizens, for it is I--panthr the great--here to deliver you a somewhat scathing, and most likely pretentious review of the latest game in the Madden franchise. For this review I wont even mention my extreme dislike of football. There are enough things gone horribly awry with 08, so so my personal opinions of the sport wont matter anyway.
Anyhow, Madden 08 (canonogically) precedes Madden 07, and will most likely be followed by Madden 09. I'm assuming that 09 will come about seeing as this franchise has sold ungodly amounts--more than five million1 for this one alone. Even more for past editions. This, however, could also be terrible for the game. Lets take a look.
I'll start out with the graphics. Now, the fact that the Wii has terrible graphics has been established, though this game looks more like a Nintendo 64 game would look like with some random HDR effects, and even more random blurring effects (more on that later) thrown in. EA seems to think they can compensate for terrible character designs (you could get hurt by all the sharp polygons flying around) by putting a blurry filter over everything. This is not the time or the place. This is football, for crying out loud. Adding these fruity effects takes away any adrenaline away from the experience--I want a twenty-man-bloodbath; not a walk through a peaceful meadow with soothing light.
Oh, and sometimes when you zoom in and out, sometimes the entire screen is covered in a 45% blur opacity for about five minute. Annoying.
On to controls. You have a broad spectrum of choices: The Wii controller, or Wii controller with the nunchuck. Where to start.... Each action (throwing, catching, tackling, punting, hiking, etc.) is done by a specific motion of either the nunchuck, Wii controller, or both at the same time. They throw everything at you all at once, and to remember every single nuance of each command is unnecessary, stupid, and a little tiring. Not to mention they don't even work half the time.
Actually this is all I'm going to review, as this is all I could bear to play. The success of Madden, to me, is maddening (pun!). To add to the aforementioned flaws: it's not even in true widescreen (there's little bars on the top and sides, even on a widescreen/480p setup); you have to do stuff on EA's website to even play online; the announcers are annoying and say the same thing over and over; and the king of them all, THERE ARE ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE DAMN GAME.
Even if you are a fan of football, or other past Maddens I wouldn't recommend this to you. It's the most half-baked excuse for a game this side of Big Rigs. It seems as though EA is actually trying to parody themselves now. Good day sir.
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