Xbox 360: Madden 2009 Review

Hiya folks. Da name's Harlem and I'll be doin some guest reviews on OGM. For my first review let's talk about Madden 09. As some of you saw, the opening sequence to this year's (next would probably be better to say) version. Beautifully done with graphics and sound, it fully takes advantage of the digital quality that's out today.

This year's Madden to me caters to people who are new to the franchise. They have what's called Madden's Test. What is does is pretty much tech you the moves of Madden, like how to juke and dodge tackles.

Just to give it a quick rundown, I jumped right into a quick match. The rosters for the teams have been updated to suit the new generation. After picking teams (I picked Dallas, who's ranked pretty high this time), it went into the game. Again there's no commentary as been the previous version, so all can focus on the game. Oh yea, and I had it on pro setting. The AI this year was actually pretty solid. It actually felt like a football game. Again, it caters to new players by actually telling you where to go as the QB to make the play work correctly. The newest feature to come into play is the Rewind mode. Let's say you attempted to do a run play but didn't get the distance you want, well you get a second chance to try to make something happen. The pretty cool thing about it is you get to pick an entire new play to try.

So skip ahead to the Madden Challenge. If anyone has played the previous game, it might have the same feel with some new stuff. Of course, you get to start out by making your character. Normally I go wide reciever, but I decided to go with the most stressful position of them all, the quaterback. So after creating the future of football, the first thing they make you do is train. Okay, so the training is pretty realistic. For QB, they mainly focus on speed and arm strenght by making you run sprints and buffing weights. They even make you run a play to test how far you can throw. So after the whole picking out agents and more training, the big day comes....DRAFT PICKS!!!! Luckliy for me, I got put on Dallas (with no Simpsons to bother me). So after that, they test your knowledge (which was damn hard. I only missed one question though). Depending on how good you did on the test and how good you run a few plays for your team during camp, pre-season comes around. Now for the QB, when they say you can play, you do. They give you a play to execute. You can follow it or do an audible and hope to God that you know what to do. When you're not in play, it skips through all the plays for both sides until either it's your time to play again or the game is over. As you start to build up your star power, you get to play more games and pretty soon, you'll be a starter. Only thing that was missing, unless I overlooked it, was the QB vision.

So my overall thought on this year's installment, definitely check it out, especially newbies. This is as real as it gets.

Score - 9.0/10.0

- Harlem