The Madden series, like most EA sports titles has become more and more realistic and complex over the last few years. To that end it seems they finally took a step back and realized that the game was mostly inaccessible for a lot of sports fan. So they went to work and came up with Madden NFL Arcade which boils NFL football down to 5-a-side, 4-downs, 4 plays on each side of the ball and some game changers (special powers etc).
It works. It really does. Of course it’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot of fun, and really that’s what we want from a game no? The rules are simple - no first downs, 60-yard field, no coin toss, no special teams, no time limit, first team to the set points wins the game.
There are no penalties and 3 passing and one running play (or 3 pass defense and a blitz option). All you can really do is flip the play left/right and maybe pump fake. So that takes a lot of the technical side of football out of the picture and lets you just get down to making big plays and big hits and having fun.
I’m not sure if it’s a combination of unexpected play calling (it’s really 50/50 pass/run) or how you execute the plays but it sure seems like the computer is quite good at preparing for what you’ll do. That doesn’t mean you won’t score a touchdown on a 40-yard deep pass on a first down or QB sneak the ball into the end zone, both are able to be done. They just seem rare in the the world of football that’s fairly realistic.
The thing that’s really missing in the gameplay area is some sort of league or continuous play mode. The only thing you have to do is a quick match against the computer or an online match. The online match of course requires you to login to EA’s own servers. From there you have the choice of ranked and unranked quick matches or a custom match. You can play in Xbox Party sessions as well and hang out in the lobbies waiting for someone to play against. It’s really all about the leaderboards and the rankings. There’s a whole piece of the game missing in that there’s no stats tracking or point to playing single
player except to practice and get used to the game. Not to say that those games against the computer aren’t fun, because they are. They just missed the whole point of the NFL which is to win and go to the Super Bowl.
The graphics are cartoony and the player bodies are disproportionate, in a sort of cool way and not so that it looks like the artists couldn’t draw regular people. The environment is mostly forgettable in that the crowd is both graphically and audibly generic and don’t really respond to what’s going on in the game.
From a music standpoint, there’s very little and it’s all generic as well. As if EA didn’t even bother to consider it and just realized there should be something there so stuffed it in right before launch.
Really, the game is quick and fast arcade football. It’s not really Madden and is barely the NFL, the graphics are good and the sound is crud. But when you want to just pick up and play whether it be against the computer, with a friend locally or a stranger online you can. It’s just too bad they didn’t finish this game before releasing it. Here’s to hoping for some good, game expanding updates (highly unlikely though they are).
