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Bret Reviews Madden 2003
by Bret-
jgand@pcfootball.net
08-11-02
First, I'll
post a link to a page containing my grossly disorganized notes
and the links to the Readme file, FAQ file, and pdf manual.
Click here to get to the page
Let’s face facts….so far the third
millennium has not been a good one for the PC football gamer.
Every software company thinks that they’re better than us,
except EA that is, and what EA has been giving us up until
now…well, Madden 2001 never made it out of beta, and Madden 2002
was just a port of the ps2 version of the PREVIOUS year. So, EA
has had quite a few sins against the PC football community to
atone for.
They very well
may have done that with Madden 2003.
Based on my
approximately 5 hours of game play so far, here is my review.
The Good:
Wow, where do I start? A lot of good things in this game…
- The graphics are
greatly improved from last year’s version
- The addition of Al
Michaels did not disappoint
- The new commentary
engine lives up to its hype. I have played every Madden game
since it made its PC debut with the ‘97 version, and this is
the first year that I did not turn off commentary within the
first hour of play.
- The addition of
mini-camp is a great one. Jeremy Strauser (Madden 2003
producer) was right when he called these mini-games
“addicting”. They are a lot of fun, and do not require that
much of a time commitment.
- The AI holes that we
have grown accustomed to seem to have been patched finally
with this version.
- There is no need to
earn codes this year, all the classic teams are available
right after the install
- Custom menu music.
You can take the cool songs EA gives you on the CD, or you can
enter the directory of your mp3 folder, and listen to your own
music through the menus and mini-camp games.
- For those of you who
like creating custom teams, there are several more detail
options available to you, including uniform and number styles.
Also, it is possible to use your custom art from the ’02
version in this game with a minimal amount of tweaking
- The accelerated clock
is again an option, for those of you into that kinda thing.
- Game play is a lot
smoother, and a lot more realistic
- It passes the most
important question, which is “Is it fun?” You bet it is!
The Bad:
- Some of the cool
fictional teams we have grown to love are gone, such as the
Marshals, Sugar Buzz, etc. Also gone are the EA Sports and
Tiburon teams, as well as their stadiums.
- Pro Bowl teams, as
well as the Aloha Stadium we were promised, are still absent
from exhibition play.
- No classic stadiums.
“Old Houston Stadium”, what the rest of us referred to as the
“Astrodome”, is gone, as are all of its counterparts.
- Apparently, ’02
rosters cannot be used in this game. Which means all of us
guys who make our own rosters are forced to start all over yet
again
- Numbering rules are
still in the game, but turned up. Not only can the old-timers
not have their original numbers, or college guys have their
numbers on custom made teams, but now, a center can’t have a
number beginning with a “7”, as many NFL centers do. I would
like to think this was a bug rather then by design.
- Those of you who have
played Madden for a few years have to retrain yourself. The
default button arrangement has been remapped, and the new
arrangement takes a bit of getting used to.
The Ugly:
- Players on classic
teams are STILL missing their names for yet another year. I
personally would love to see EA FINALLY fix this
- Franchise gamers will
not be too happy with this game. As we all know by now,
on-line franchise is gone, and the off-line franchise is no
longer customizable as far as amount of teams and divisions
go. If you want to play an off-line franchise, it HAS to be 32
teams, 8 divisions of 4.
- EASO. It seems to
work OK, save for a couple early bugs, but what makes this
ugly is that it’s only free for the first 60 days of use.
After that, EASO is going to assess a charge to make use of
its service. At least the IP to IP option is still there.
- I found out the hard
way that there is an incompatibility between Krystal Studio’s
Divx codes and the game. These codecs must be uninstalled in
order for the game to start successfully.
So, based on
all other PC football action games released since the turn of
the millennium, this would rate an easy 10 on a scale of 1 to
10, and will redefine the scale for next season, as this is the
game that all future released will be compared to for quite a
few years.
In short, I
recommend picking it up. It passes the “fun” test.
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