Not quite Perfect, but Still the Best

Alright, I've had Madden for about four months now, and rarely has it left my vertical disc tray. I'm in the 10th year of a proud Fredericksburg Tigers franchise, with three Super Bowls under our belts and going for fourth this year. Nearly all currently existing players are retired now, and it's now a bunch of randomly generated characters, as well as a couple of studs I created myself. I'm ten million under the cap, but I've got a star WR up for contract renewal at the end of the year, and I've got to decide to what to do -- keep him, and cut some young (but cheap) talent? Cut him, and try my luck with unproven and inexperienced players? Or maybe trade him -- unload his huge salary off to some team that needs some help, and maybe get some high draft picks in return? I've got a QB who gets hurt at least twice a year, but when he's healthy, he's all-pro. Do I keep him? Where can I get a decent backup? And my LG is holding out on me -- should I cave in to his agent's demands for a new contract? Where will that put me under the cap? Do I want this guy on my payroll for the next four years? He's 36 years old...

And so on and so on it goes in the world of Madden '02's franchise mode, just about the most addictive thing on my television, after "24" on Tuesday nights.

(I'm gonna work under the assumption that anyone reading this has played Madden in the past, or probably already has '02 and just wants to see what other people think.)

First -- the gameplay.
Not bad at all, really. The passing system is still the most intuitive out there, and the receivers usually run pretty precise routes, though they're not particulary adept at shaking their coverage. If you scramble your quarterback, the receivers make their way back to the line of scrimmage to provide you an easy dump off, which is a nice realistic touch. Screen passes to the running back need a little work, as it's supposed to be a slow-developing kind of play, but if you time it and wait for the play to develop, the RB is usually 15 yards downfield instead of a few steps off the line of scrimmage like he should be.

Kickoff returns are fairly realistic, but returning punts with any consistency is pretty tough. The AI's coverage team is usually right on top of you once you receive the ball, so you end up fair-catching a bunch. Unless you try to block the punt on every down, but then the AI ends up kicking it out of bounds most of the time.

The running game is always the true test of the football sim, and this one has a pretty decent one. It's momentum-based movement, so your boy won't stop on a dime and reverse fields for you with any real quickness. The spin move is okay, though a little slow-developing, and the nifty little R1/L1 jukes are kinda fun. The stiff arms are pretty much worthless -- you're better off just mashing turbo and hope you run the defender over. The tackling animations are pretty well done, though sometimes it doesn't seem to take much to take someone down. I've sacked quarterbacks by pushing the O-lineman into them... it seems in real life, the quarterback would kinda just sidestep that kind of thing.

The Graphics
Pretty nice, though still not perfect. Getting tackled sometimes involved the defender sticking his entire head into your chest, and passing his helmet through your back. Seems like that would be a little painful. Coaches on the sidelines will angrily walk right into a ref and come out the other side. (The chain guys on the sideline that fall down a lot is a funny little touch though.)

The players look good, as do the uniforms. Metallic tones like gold or silver helmets don't look quite right though. The silver looks almost white, and the gold has a flat kinda beige look to it. Any other colors look great though -- a black helmet really catches the lights well, and looks fantastic. The stadiums are great, but the crowds are still cardboard looking bitmaps that wear different colors to go with whatever stadium you're in (purple in B'more, etc).

Annoyances
Load times and save times could use a little speeding up, but the game files are rather large, so I guess it's acceptable. Sometimes the animation gets a little jerky.

Three times in the past four months the game's crashed on me, locking up the PS2 totally. Really annoying if you've just played a couple of games in your season, or if you've just completed a bunch of off-season activity in your franchise.

The "Challenge Play" instant-replay thing is a joke. The AI has no real concept of when to challenge a play (It'll challenge a one-yard pick up on second down in the first quarter. Really.) And never... I repeat... never will you challenge a play successfully. I'm sure maybe someone in the big ol' world has won a challenge on this thing, but it's never happened for me. (I've even brought my wife into my little world -- "Does his foot look out of bounds to you??? Of course it doesn't! Dang instant replay!" She of course, does not care. "Mow the lawn," she replies.)

So anyway, get the game. It's pretty good. The End.