Sound:  
[Ed.: Pardon me while I rant here for a while.] The sound in Madden has a few decent points, but as a whole, needs to just be taken out behind the shed and shot.

I’ll start with the good, because it won’t take long. The songs included come from rock groups such as Andrew W.K., and actually are pretty entertaining to listen to as you are in menu screens, drafting, etc… So, as for the good, that’s about it

The rest of the sound in the game drives me absolutely insane. Now, as you may have surmised from my blurb in my NCAA review, I hate John Madden. He is the single most, obnoxious broadcaster I have ever had the great displeasure to have to listen to. I despise every word that comes out of his mouth, and he will single-handedly force me to never watch Monday Night Football again, as long as he is broadcasting on it. That having been said, I was thoroughly appalled at the sound in Madden 2003.

Now, I don’t generally expect a lot out of the sound on sports games; because there are only so many things that someone can say to describe a game. I understand that, and can accept that. But Madden does nearly everything, sound-wise, a step or two below what NCAA 2003 did a few weeks before it. The commentary, when compared to NCAA, is horrible. In NCAA, Corso, Nessler, and Herbstreit did a phenomenal job in the commentary. They had snappy banter and intelligently commented on the action on the field as it happened, their voices were great when they called the action, and flowed smoothly when they used the player names, so as to avoid sounding mechanical. NCAA has, hands down, the best commentary I have ever heard in a football game. Now, since Madden is supposed to be the flagship title, I figured that they would put extra time into every aspect of it, but I was dead wrong.

The commentary by Madden and Al Michaels (a play by play man whom I previously respected) is bad. Madden’s comments are as stupid as they are from the real life version of the man, and he often seems as if he’s commenting on a completely different game than the one you are playing. Perhaps he’s got a TV going up in the booth with another game on it, and he’s commenting on THAT game, but unfortunately, I think he’s just that far gone from really having anything of value to say and just throws out whatever comes into his old, confused brain. I’m guessing that at some point I will return a punt for a touchdown, and he will make some kind of comment about carrots. If it happens, I’ll DEFINITELY let you all know.

Michaels sounds like a robot every play, and especially bad when a player name is involved. He repeats his lines pretty frequently, and on one instance, even said the exact same comment on three plays in a row (this was when I was in the 35-40 yard line, and he kept saying “They’re just about in field goal range” every play from first to third down. Unprecedented crappiness in commentary.) The standard I hold games to isn’t that high, but I at least expect them to not sound completely robotic. Every time Michaels uses it name, it sounds like “CULPEPPER hands off to BENNETT. And he’s brought down at the TWENTY EIGHT yard line by URLACHER.” It transitions the names in horribly, when it even bothers to have the name in there at all.

What I mean by that is, there are WAAAAAY too many names that AREN’T included in the game. That bothers the hell out of me. I mean, even players who are already IN the NFL, like first round pick (#5 overall) in this year’s draft, Quentin Jammer, aren’t in there. Add to that the fact that a vast number of the players that are imported from NCAA don’t have their last names in Madden, so they end up as “#55” or whatever they are, for the rest of their careers once you draft them. How they cannot take the time to put in all the possible names that they can bring in is beyond me. I have played dozens of games of NCAA and have yet to NOT have a name included, and that is for a game that has over 100 teams on it. When I see that kind of attention to detail, it makes me that much more annoyed by Madden’s oversight of such things. It would make it that much greater if they just took the extra couple of hours to capture a few more names for usage and it would rise so much higher in my esteem. As it is, the omission of names is unforgivable in my eyes, and only caps off a sound set that is well below what little I have already come to expect from a sports game.

So, overall, the sound was a huge letdown for me. How they can decide to not take the time to put in things, like all the names that may end up in the game, is beyond me. It would seem that it would be a much easier process to capture commentary with Madden’s two man team than with NCAA’s three man booth, but they managed to make it infinitely worse, and I will no longer play this game with the sound on my TV. (NCAA, I’ll still listen to you, buddy.)

Gameplay:  
The gameplay offers many options. Exhibition games, Season mode, Practice mode, they’re pretty self explanatory. The new addition this year is Mini-Camp mode, where you can practice all kinds of specific skills, such as pass rushing for your defensive linemen or passing accuracy for your QB. It’s an entertaining mode, and you can actually earn some Madden Cards for your collection if you beat the higher difficulty levels for each skill. Some of the skills are pretty useless in the actual course of the game, like the pass deflection drill. In it, a machine shoots passes to different receiver targets, and you have to use your defensive back to deflect or intercept the ball. Now, this is easy to do in the drill, where you have time to get to the target, hit the R button to square yourself up to the ball, and hit the Y button to catch it. However, in the actual course of the games, this situation never presents itself in this way. You either have to make deflections on the run, or the ball is thrown to you, and you don’t need to adjust yourself at all. Not a useful drill, but entertaining for a while, as most of them are.

The true bulk of the game lies in Franchise mode, as it has in Madden installations the last few years. Here you carry your team from year to year, pick up free agents, draft players, and watch you players retire into their blurry-minded life after football. You can even import a year’s draft class from NCAA and draft the players you made into college stars, or the star players you played against in NCAA. Also new this year, a scouting combine has been added to the off season, allowing you to scout players over the course of a few weeks to see what their strengths and weaknesses are. You have to try to scout players that you can find at all levels of the draft, and not just first and second rounders, so that you can maybe find a gem in the late rounds of the draft, and not just be guessing at random players in rounds 6 or 7. It’s definitely a great addition to the realism, and you feel more like a GM of a team with that extra touch of eyeing up your talent for the draft. The rest remains pretty much the same. Work the salary cap, make your trades, replace your injured players as best you can. It’s standard Madden fare, but that is not a bad thing.

Now, the games themselves, when compared to NCAA 2003, seem a little slower in terms of actual gameplay. In NCAA, the players run, cut and make moves very slowly. A running back can stop on a dime and cut the other way to shake a defender. In Madden, it still suffers a bit from, what I call, the “change of action bug”. By this, I mean the slight pause that occurs when a runner cuts hard the other way, or makes a move. It is realistic to have a slight slowdown when a player changes his movement, but the game often pauses even longer than a normal real life player would. It also leads to you getting tackled by the defender 9 times out of 10, as opposed to NCAA, where a well timed cut or move will shake a defender more often than not. It’s a minor annoyance, but one that has already been eliminated in one game, and I would expect it to be taken out of this one as well. Aside from that, the games just seem to play a step slower than NCAA, but when you get used to it, they are still a ton of fun to play.

Control:
The controls on Madden remain largely the same. On offense, A snaps the ball and brings up your passing cursors if you are passing. A will also make your player run if he has the ball. B is to dive with the ball, Y is to hurdle/jump, and X is a spin move. R and L serve as juke moves, and the C stick will stiff arm the defenders.

On defense, A and X change your player before the snap. After the snap, X is to sprint your player, A switches to the man closest to the ball, L and R are swim and spin moves when locked up with an offensive man, and B is to dive tackle. You can use Y and B before the snap to call audibles for coverage or your whole defense, respectively.

The controls remain largely the same form last year’s offering, and that allows veteran players to jump in to the game without losing a beat. It’s a well laid out control scheme, and will likely remain the same for next year as well.

Multiplayer:
As is typical with most sports games, multiplayer is very enjoyable if you have friends to play with. Easy as that. Trash talk is more fun with your friends than it is against the computer, because the computer never talks back, and it doesn’t even HAVE a mother.

OVERALL:
As a complete package, Madden is a very good game. The gameplay remains very good, and most everything, with the exception of the sound, is better than last year’s Madden. Perhaps if they can somehow make a version of Madden without actually having to include Madden himself, EA could deliver the ultimate in footbally goodness, but for some reason, I have my doubts that it will happen. I can always hope though. So, I can honestly tell you, that if you are a die-hard football fan… well, you probably already have this game. But if you are a casual football fan, this would probably be a game you’d really enjoy as well. With a few very small exceptions, such as the entire crappy sound package, the game is put together quite well, and should offer enough football for just about anyone. Now, I have to get back to work. That John Madden effigy isn’t going to burn itself you know!

 

The Lowdown on  Madden 2003 Aesthetics: Very Good Control: Very Good Gameplay: Very Good Multiplayer: Very Good Sound: Terrible Innovation: 3/6 Lasting Appeal: 5/6 Overall: Very Good! "A Must-Buy"