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August 13, 2004 | 10:55 PM PST
by: Ken Cauley
The world of football videogames has always been centralized around gameplay realism, the very reason why the Madden series has been revered as the premiere football video-game franchise of our time. In fact, the mastered physics and feel of the football series have been stamped on nearly every single release in the realm of pigskin videogames. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t heard already, Madden’s that damn good. How can it get any better? In celebration of its 15-year anniversary of the series that defined the sports genre in videogames, Madden NFL 2005 this year focuses solely on one thing that has been updated after every handful of Madden releases - satisfaction.
Still, when a popular, high-profile series makes a new release every year, pop-culture has most gamers pondering even more about the decision to shell out the fifty bucks to pay for possibly a near-exact title. Rest assured, the amount of features and improvements in Madden NFL 2005 will surprise even the biggest football enthusiast or typical hardcore Madden player. Surprising in itself? With the series’ track record every year – not at all.
Features:
New Hit-Stick: Change the momentum of the game by using the right-analog stick to force upon a bigger hit, force a turnover, and turn the crowd into one wild party. Timing is everything.
New Defensive Playmaker: Pre-snap assignments, change matchups on the go, control just about every defensive player on the field before and after the snap!
New Storyline Central: Finally, EA Sports adds a truly realistic form of football simulation. Now, your games are impacted by the stories that surround your team, such as your team’s WR whining about being underpaid, emails from other coaches, or stadium prices being too high. All of it is featured on the internal EA Sports Radio, hosted digitally by Tony Bruno.
Enhanced New Franchise Mode: Players now react to everything in Franchise mode. Make a player a team captain, or trade away the unhappy ones. The new game-by-game progression system also rewards individual players after a game.
Create-a-Fan: Finally, the ultimate fan can be created! The new team-specific fan-scenes during every game will showcase your creation in all its hardcore glory.
New Skill Specific Minigames: Two minute drill and rushing attack bring even more replay value to the table.
New Soundtrack via EA Trax, including: Hoobastank, New Found Glory, Green Day, Wylde Bunch, JR Ewing, The Hives, Jazza Pha, Yung Wun, Z-Trip, and Strata.
Gameplay:
Defensive Playmaker: Having a game release every year and improving upon its previous version is quite the difficult task. Madden NFL 2005 is certainly not the exception, as its previous title last year shocked many with its fresh, new feel. Sure, the realistic elements of the new Madden have been revamped and tweaked as usual, but what else could be improved? EA Sports has taken all of the criticisms and suggestions into account, acting upon Madden-enthusiast requests of playability and gaming satisfaction. And, as always, Madden has outdone itself once again.
Every sports fan in the world (other than those of boxing) knows that defense wins championships. In the world of gaming, Madden certainly lives up to the saying both ways. With the all-new defensive playmaker, missing from last year’s version of the gameplay enhancer, Black Routes, improved zone formations, and very, very hungry defensive lineman will be ringing in your heads for as long until you’ve mastered them.
Defensive Playmaker can be used for D-line shifts, necessary for correcting gaps during running plays or taking advantage of a running play. Now, you’re able to call for an outside rush, inside crash, or slanting right/left. Basically, this allows players to alter the movement of the line without physically moving their position from the rest of the line. Absent from 2004 were specific player audibles, most notably for the linebacker position on defense (the most popular position on the D-side). Most notably, improved functionality has allowed for hot routes to specific DBs (using the control pad). Being that there’s 11 players on the field at one-time, it’s possible to create your own custom blitzes, crafting your own opposing masterpiece. Also included is bump-and-run coverage, allowing for better coverage for both your DBs and your safeties without sacrificing a long-bomb play down the field. Don’t be too excited however – Tiburon has finally disabled illegal position substitutions, such as assigning Champ Bailey as a wide-receiver for example. Finally, you can assign cornerbacks or linebackers to specific receivers, allowing for double coverage, zone-switching, and pressing towards the receiver at the line. This takes the sometimes uneven matchups out of the way, as Marvin Harrison in Madden 2004 was way too dominant – it’s time for good ol’ Charles Woodson to cover the problem. Some specific additions to the improved design also include fake DB blitzes, and direct assignments to receivers at the line.
Defensive AI has been vastly improved as being more aggressive, and less likely to cause penalties. QBs will no longer have the breathing room to run away effectively from a vast D-line… even Mike Vick. Black Routes, new to the series, are black arrows that show quarterback containment, necessary for taking advantage of flawed assignments or incredibly fast QBs. The design is truly effective for moving around players behind the line to mirror a QB’s post-snap rushes, without leaving a weak side for the defensive line to handle. All in all, the specific enhancements on defense will shape up for a more competitive game, as players will certainly adjust their defenses to their opponents, mastering the speed and effectiveness of formations and audibles. The 3-4 Pressure formation has also been removed, opposite of newfound effectiveness of the Quarters and Prevent formations. Despite the slight learning curve for full understanding of the manual tweaks on both sides of the ball, the end result should make Madden NFL 2005 the ultimate, competitive sports experience. If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a Defensive Coordinator for a football team, this is a great way to start.
Storyline Central: Everybody will be dead wrong when comparing the perfection of last year’s franchise mode to the current one. Having excelled in realistic ownership options once again, Madden NFL 2005’s new Storyline Central mode brings professional sports drama to the table.
In this mode, every player is affected. Each of them has their wants, needs, fortunes, personality, and most of all, problems. Once a game of names and numbers has been transformed into one of realistic characters, needing proper management and playing care. One of the two additions to this new mode is the in-game EA Sports’ Tony Bruno Radio Show, an archived weekly-radio show highlighting the real events in the digital football world, asking trivia, or interviewing your players one by one – most of which are exact voice samples from your favorite real-life players. The radio is able to be turned on during the editing process of your team, and it’s innovative to see your very own player complain about his own team while you’re currently editing the line-up. It’s just amazing how much effort Tiburon has put into the entire package of the user experience.
With the radio show, which is also able to be turned off in preference of the EA Trax music, comes the weekly newspapers headlining the inside stories of specific teams. You’ll be receiving two different publications, national and local. While the local newspapers highlight your team’s progress, the national publication is just as important. Learning about a specific player’s successes, failures, or even desires to leave his team can sway a management decision quickly. Complete with pictures of the incidents as well as the watermark for nearly every major newspaper in the nation as well, you’ve got even more realism than ever. Need to know when to trade or pick-up a free-agent on the market? Madden’s player rumblings provides all of that and more. Soon, you’ll be badmouthing players on a digital screen.
Being in the information technology age of our culture, all coaches receive a PDA to receive e-mails from assistant coaches or check out the status on the team’s positional battles, which show the level of competitiveness for specific positions within your club. Your decision whether or not to start that injured running-back or a healthy back-up may also affect team morale. Yes, everything is one extremely volatile situation, which must be balanced to keep up with expectations. Naming team captains and assigning franchise players can also affect a team’s morale in their trust for marquee players. Another new addition to the mode, marquee players include those top-notch, salary-draining players such as Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, Marshall Faulk, or Ray Lewis himself. The mark greatly increases team morale, and while still new, it’s easy to see where this feature can go in the future, highlighting future stars such as Larry Fitzgerald and Robert Gallery.
Looking for another reason to earn a few hundred-million dollars to find out just how much of a team-honcho you can really be? Save the money; Madden’s here to represent, with extremely little to be disappointed about.
Still, when a popular, high-profile series makes a new release every year, pop-culture has most gamers pondering even more about the decision to shell out the fifty bucks to pay for possibly a near-exact title. Rest assured, the amount of features and improvements in Madden NFL 2005 will surprise even the biggest football enthusiast or typical hardcore Madden player. Surprising in itself? With the series’ track record every year – not at all.
Features:
Gameplay:
Defensive Playmaker: Having a game release every year and improving upon its previous version is quite the difficult task. Madden NFL 2005 is certainly not the exception, as its previous title last year shocked many with its fresh, new feel. Sure, the realistic elements of the new Madden have been revamped and tweaked as usual, but what else could be improved? EA Sports has taken all of the criticisms and suggestions into account, acting upon Madden-enthusiast requests of playability and gaming satisfaction. And, as always, Madden has outdone itself once again.
Every sports fan in the world (other than those of boxing) knows that defense wins championships. In the world of gaming, Madden certainly lives up to the saying both ways. With the all-new defensive playmaker, missing from last year’s version of the gameplay enhancer, Black Routes, improved zone formations, and very, very hungry defensive lineman will be ringing in your heads for as long until you’ve mastered them.
Defensive Playmaker can be used for D-line shifts, necessary for correcting gaps during running plays or taking advantage of a running play. Now, you’re able to call for an outside rush, inside crash, or slanting right/left. Basically, this allows players to alter the movement of the line without physically moving their position from the rest of the line. Absent from 2004 were specific player audibles, most notably for the linebacker position on defense (the most popular position on the D-side). Most notably, improved functionality has allowed for hot routes to specific DBs (using the control pad). Being that there’s 11 players on the field at one-time, it’s possible to create your own custom blitzes, crafting your own opposing masterpiece. Also included is bump-and-run coverage, allowing for better coverage for both your DBs and your safeties without sacrificing a long-bomb play down the field. Don’t be too excited however – Tiburon has finally disabled illegal position substitutions, such as assigning Champ Bailey as a wide-receiver for example. Finally, you can assign cornerbacks or linebackers to specific receivers, allowing for double coverage, zone-switching, and pressing towards the receiver at the line. This takes the sometimes uneven matchups out of the way, as Marvin Harrison in Madden 2004 was way too dominant – it’s time for good ol’ Charles Woodson to cover the problem. Some specific additions to the improved design also include fake DB blitzes, and direct assignments to receivers at the line.
Defensive AI has been vastly improved as being more aggressive, and less likely to cause penalties. QBs will no longer have the breathing room to run away effectively from a vast D-line… even Mike Vick. Black Routes, new to the series, are black arrows that show quarterback containment, necessary for taking advantage of flawed assignments or incredibly fast QBs. The design is truly effective for moving around players behind the line to mirror a QB’s post-snap rushes, without leaving a weak side for the defensive line to handle. All in all, the specific enhancements on defense will shape up for a more competitive game, as players will certainly adjust their defenses to their opponents, mastering the speed and effectiveness of formations and audibles. The 3-4 Pressure formation has also been removed, opposite of newfound effectiveness of the Quarters and Prevent formations. Despite the slight learning curve for full understanding of the manual tweaks on both sides of the ball, the end result should make Madden NFL 2005 the ultimate, competitive sports experience. If you’ve ever dreamed of becoming a Defensive Coordinator for a football team, this is a great way to start.
Storyline Central: Everybody will be dead wrong when comparing the perfection of last year’s franchise mode to the current one. Having excelled in realistic ownership options once again, Madden NFL 2005’s new Storyline Central mode brings professional sports drama to the table.
In this mode, every player is affected. Each of them has their wants, needs, fortunes, personality, and most of all, problems. Once a game of names and numbers has been transformed into one of realistic characters, needing proper management and playing care. One of the two additions to this new mode is the in-game EA Sports’ Tony Bruno Radio Show, an archived weekly-radio show highlighting the real events in the digital football world, asking trivia, or interviewing your players one by one – most of which are exact voice samples from your favorite real-life players. The radio is able to be turned on during the editing process of your team, and it’s innovative to see your very own player complain about his own team while you’re currently editing the line-up. It’s just amazing how much effort Tiburon has put into the entire package of the user experience.
With the radio show, which is also able to be turned off in preference of the EA Trax music, comes the weekly newspapers headlining the inside stories of specific teams. You’ll be receiving two different publications, national and local. While the local newspapers highlight your team’s progress, the national publication is just as important. Learning about a specific player’s successes, failures, or even desires to leave his team can sway a management decision quickly. Complete with pictures of the incidents as well as the watermark for nearly every major newspaper in the nation as well, you’ve got even more realism than ever. Need to know when to trade or pick-up a free-agent on the market? Madden’s player rumblings provides all of that and more. Soon, you’ll be badmouthing players on a digital screen.
Being in the information technology age of our culture, all coaches receive a PDA to receive e-mails from assistant coaches or check out the status on the team’s positional battles, which show the level of competitiveness for specific positions within your club. Your decision whether or not to start that injured running-back or a healthy back-up may also affect team morale. Yes, everything is one extremely volatile situation, which must be balanced to keep up with expectations. Naming team captains and assigning franchise players can also affect a team’s morale in their trust for marquee players. Another new addition to the mode, marquee players include those top-notch, salary-draining players such as Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, Marshall Faulk, or Ray Lewis himself. The mark greatly increases team morale, and while still new, it’s easy to see where this feature can go in the future, highlighting future stars such as Larry Fitzgerald and Robert Gallery.
Looking for another reason to earn a few hundred-million dollars to find out just how much of a team-honcho you can really be? Save the money; Madden’s here to represent, with extremely little to be disappointed about.
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