Madden NFL 08 Review

BY Soheil Sadeghi | POSTED: 31 January 2008

Forget the rest, try it on Wii.



After the last year debut on the Nintendo Wii and becoming one of console's top sellers, the expectations were high for the '08 edition and fortunately this latest edition does not fall short of them. Like other EA Sport games in the series, the Wii version is suitable for longtime fans and the newcomers alike. Cleverly, EA -like what it had done in other sports games released for the Wii- has built the advanced controls schemes (with Nunchuck and Wii remote) for hardcore players and Family mode (playing with just the Wii remote) for the rookie players along with Wii players' favorite special mini games for some party fun.

Madden '08 compared to the last year's version has some improved graphics. 07' edition was simply looked to be a game port of other consoles equipped with some Wii motion-sensing features. This year otherwise, on graphics comparison, madden is much better than before, with good field grass, great light reflections on helmets and jerseys and better animations , it's a whole new story in the visual side. Playing with the game has also been improved, there are some new and simplified controls which are easier to remember and perform and subsequently give you a better and true to the real thing experience. Actually, Madden on the Wii is the most near reality sports simulation released on a game system to date. Because you have to perform some of those moves the real players do, and unlike the Wii's FIFA game which you have to just throw balls in the pitch by doing the exact over the head gesture with your remotes, here by the nature of playing this kind of football with hands (as Americans love to call it that way) you have to imitate so many of the moves by your Wii remote and Nunchuck and leave the runs to the Nunchuck's analog stick in Advanced mode or the auto-run feature of the simple family friendly mode. This infers that controls and gestures are the most significant parts of this game make it a completely new experience to those who have played the same edition on different platforms.

Like most of the other games released on the Wii console, Party mode is a big center of attention. Wii is becoming famous for all the fun it can bring to the groups of friends with different gaming experiences. In Madden '08's party mode, there are three options available. You can have an instant play with your friends and have a human instead of the console to oppose you in a regular session, you can play in more than 20 mini games and for the most hardcore fans of NFL competitions, you and your friends can even participate in a trivia match to show off your knowledge of the game.

The single player game is not limited to exhibition matches. In the Superstar: Hall of fame mode, you can have a completely new player and live a life as a rising star of the NFL competition. This is not a new feature, but the mechanism is a little bit different this time. Unlike the last year's mandatory stats assignment, now you can freely select any aspect of your player and tweak different combinations to give yourself the player of your dreams. The famous Franchise mode is also present in this year's edition, filling the gap of the old beloved season mode.

Along with all roster updates, new party games, improved graphics and more Wii gesture based controls, is the most noticeable addition of this year's version which is the online multiplayer mode. Last year's madden was a noteworthy debut of the series in a new console, but the lack of online multiplayer was a major drawback. This time around, EA has carried out what has been left out due to the rush to make Madden '07 a Wii's release line-up title. But here we are having one of the most complete online multiplayer enabled games in the Wii's archive. This online mode is handled with EA's proprietary EA Nation online system. For a two player exhibition game, you can easily log into EA Nations system through your game interface and find someone and start the game. Even you can choose to play a ranked or an unranked match. With the addition of leaderboards and EA's Messenger to chat with your online buddies, live scoreboards of every weeks NFL's games and so much more, you will have an experiment close to what you may find in an Xbox360 with its better established online environment. Here the focus of EA is to give you the robust and solid playtime on the first online version of this game on Wii. I have to mention that, the mini games are just local multiplayer only, and as I said before, the online multiplayer is limited to exhibition matches, but there is always another edition in the works and there is always a next year to put so many new features into the game in order to make the fans empty their wallets. Although that is the image we see in the other side of the globe. In this side, the gridiron fans will not make a top seller out of this game, because the majority prefers to play football with their feet.