Madden NFL 09 First Hands-On
We head to the 2008 NFL Rookie Madden Challenge and go hands-on with EA Sports' upcoming football game.
EA Sports recently held its 2008 NFL Rookie Madden Challenge in Los Angeles, hosting a number of rookie NFL players in an eight-player tournament to determine which future NFL star has the most skill on the sticks. Newly minted Washington Redskins wide receiver Devin Thomas took home the trophy during the tournament, beating up on former Appalachian State (and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers) wideout Dexter Jackson to take the win. However, before all of the Madden madness began, we got a chance to check out the upcoming Madden NFL 09 for the first time.
After booting up the game, our first step was to establish our Madden IQ, a new feature in the game that will automatically gauge your skill through a series of minigames presented in a futuristic hologram style. There are four drills to run through--run offense, pass offense, run defense, and pass defense--and, despite the sci-fi visuals, the minigames themselves will be familiar to Madden players straightaway. For the running drills, your goal will be to beat individual defenders on your way toward a touchdown, whereas in the passing tests, you'll be judged on the number of passes you can complete against a variety of coverages.
As you might expect, you'll be asked to stop the CPU from moving the ball during the defensive run and passing drills. We assumed that the defensive running drills would be fairly easy, but they actually proved to be tougher than the passing defense drills. This was partially because of the difficulty of making open-field tackles one-on-one, and partially because the CPU seemed a bit too adept at busting out of tackles. Similarly, on the surface the passing defensive drills seemed like they might be the most difficult, given that staying tight with a receiver in Madden has traditionally been an advanced skill. However, that fact is mitigated a bit in the drill because time slows down a little when the virtual quarterback puts the ball up in the air, giving you a chance to get a hand up in the air and break up the play.
At the end of each of the drills, we got a score in each category, ranging from rookie to all-Madden. The final Madden IQ is a mixture of those different scores, and that score is used to dynamically control your game's difficulty as you play through it. When you start a game, you'll be able to pick from a variety of difficulty levels, including the standards such as rookie or all-pro, or choose the "My Skill" difficulty to play the game with your custom difficulty sliders. As your skills improve (or if they degrade), the game will then automatically adjust difficulty aspects to compensate for your rising (or falling) Madden IQ.
There's one other aspect of difficulty in Madden NFL 09: game style. There are a number of different game styles you can choose from before you begin a game, and each presents information to you in a slightly different way once the game begins. On the beginner game style, the game is simplified to a great degree; for example, when in the huddle, the game will give you only one play to call. As you move up through the more advanced game-style options, you'll get more play-call options available to you, until you reach the hardcore level, which is a presentation level designed for the most faithful Madden fans. At the hardcore level, superfluous features such as instant replays and the backtrack feature (which breaks down your busted plays in exacting details) are turned off so that you can get to the next play as quickly as possible.
The dynamic game difficulty and the different game styles are EA's attempt at leveling the playing field a bit between Madden players who might be of wildly different skill levels. When playing against an opponent, both players will be able to choose their individual game style and see just as much (or as little) information about the game as they want.
On the field, Madden 09 has lots of little features that set it apart from the previous year's game. Things such as brand-new camera angles before plays are immediately noticeable, but there are also more substantial improvements that just feel right on the field. At its spring press event in Vancouver, EA talked a lot about the improvements to the character-animation systems from previous years and, even though it's not a night-and-day transition from last year's game, it is noticeable. Players seem more responsive than ever, able to switch directions quicker and, though we weren't able to see it in action ourselves, we understand that the ability to spin out of tackles will help improve the running game. The improved animations won't benefit only the offense; producers told us that the ball-strip animations will be improved to make it slightly easier to pull off.
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- GameSpot Score8.0great
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- Release: Aug 12, 2008 »
- ESRB: Everyone
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