Tackling the Inevitable: Madden NFL 08 (Wii) Review
Posted on
Thursday, September 13, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Unless you've been under a rock for the last two decades, you should know exactly what you are going to get when you purchase the current year's iteration of the Madden NFL series. In year's past, this has meant the addition of one or two highly touted (and quickly forgotten) new features, a barely current roster update and perhaps a graphical tweak or two. The only real surprises in the series come with the shift from past-gen consoles to the next-gen. Those first versions often come with a plethora of bugs or missing features as EA's development teams get up to speed on their new console. Madden NFL 08 for the Wii, featuring the surely-doomed Vince Young as the cover athlete, is the inevitable result of the typical Madden development cycle, but with a new set of unexpected problems.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
To discuss the actual game seems almost a waste of words. If you like football, particularly NFL-branded football with licensed teams and real-life player names and ratings, you have no choice in video games other than the Madden series. This is the disappointing, yet inevitable result of the oft-cursed exclusive contract EA won from the NFL in 2004. As little as the Madden series iterated when they had competition, they have made any fewer attempts to innovate since. The actual gameplay would be hard to distinguish from the 07 Wii version, other than the mapping of buttons is different for what seems arbitrary reasons at best. Most of the playbooks are the same, the on-field graphics received no significant upgrade, the commentary is little changed, and the AI works with a clone-like similarity to 07. Yes, if you pay $50 for this gem, you are buying 07 again.
It won't feel the same at first, since as I mentioned, the buttons all do different things. The difference in key mapping makes some things easier but for the most part only requires gaining familiarity before becoming second nature. Things like choosing your defensive players, making defensive position shifts and defensive audibles are easier, but audibles for the offense are harder to execute, relying on nunchuk waggles for no good reason. Even with the changes, it feels no different than the 07 version. This is only a bad thing because one has to pay $50 for essentially a roster update, but those who have purchased Madden more than once are well aware of this, their financial scars already having scabbed over to the point of numbness.
What makes Madden NFL 08 for the Wii different is the piss poor execution of things that should be child's play for the Madden team. With so many iterations of the same game engine under their belt, features like quick-loading menus and online play should be refined diamonds, features so polished they burn the retinas. After all, navigating a menu should be the most basic of functions for a programmer, especially when the options on the menus haven't changed since 2003. But the menus in Madden NFL 08 are sluggish. Online play, while new to the Wii version, has been in Madden since the 2003 version on the PS2. And yet, the Wii's online play is in one word, awful.
Fucking awful. I played one game online, and have not gone back since. The game was laggy, like swimming through molasses. Worse yet, I couldn't tell if my opponent was a complete fucking idiot, or if the game was bugged. Multiple times before the snap, my opponent would just wander across the line of scrimmage into an offsides penalty for no reason. At least twice, the opponent just seemed to be meandering in my backfield. The game never even made it to a conclusion, as the opponent was disconnected. I assume he was disconnected by the service, since he was winning at the time. Again, the Madden series has been online since 2003. While yes, there are differences between console hardware, the science of moving discrete packets of bits from two client machines to one server and back isn't new, nor is the problem of latency. I do not expect a perfect online experience, but I certainly expect something better than this no matter what restrictions Nintendo places on online play. And despite there being two roster updates for the PS3 and 360, there have been no offline roster updates for the Wii. These things are Sports Games 101 type of mistakes, and EA has no excuse for them considering the monumental success every version of Madden achieves. They have the money to do all these things right, so one can only assume they choose not to.
With all that said, the game is still fun. If you are the type to buy a new version of Madden and enjoy the Madden style of football, you'll enjoy this version as much as last year. But if the idea of buying a bug-ridden version of last year's game with new rosters offends you, stay far away from this game. Perhaps the addition of Peter Moore to EASports' hierarchy will improve next year's version, but that would be a minor miracle. The game gets an inevitable 7 out of 10 overall score, the kind of game only past Madden owners should consider purchasing.
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:49 AM
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