Madden NFL 09 (PSP)

While not exactly phoning it in, the PSP version has none of the new features in the console game.
8/14/2008 10:28 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Twenty years of Madden? Twenty years since Trip Hawkins and John Madden hammered out the idea on a train to Oakland, and Electronic Arts made skinny fans feel like a little bit like self-confident, football-playing Masters of the Universe? Once Madden was released, we were all Paper Lions, just like George Plimpton. A damn score of years, two long decades. How old does that make you feel? It makes me feel utterly ancient, yeah, but somehow inwardly proud to have seen virtual football players evolve from stick figures on the Apple computer, to cartoon sprites on the Sega Genesis, then nearer to reality in Madden NFL 09. As anthropologist Ashley Montagu wryly spewed, "I want to die young at a ripe old age," and playing Madden, when it's good, is one of the gaming joys that keep me young.

But is the PSP version a worthy 20th anniversary gift to gamers? The quick answer is, not quite. While it's a serviceable game, not much has changed from last year's version. In the console version, the biggest spin from the EA folks regarding Madden NFL 09 is the idea that the game will adapt to your style of play using what they call the Adaptive Difficulty Engine. It involves carefully testing your abilities before you start the season and taking your results into the season.

But that prime feature is not present in the PSP version. I guess it was too much code for the handheld to handle. Yet you will find that the graphics are steps up from last year's version.

While the movements of players in John Madden's game have become more natural over the years, they still have been somewhat robotic and alien-like. This year, the movements are more like the complex human engine that we are. As they run the field, they're not completely lifelike, but they appear to possess more than a few of our 206 human bones and 639 muscles to move. While the players don't seem to have seem to have the personality they have in the in the console iteration, console-quality artificial intelligence just can't be placed in a handheld game. There's not enough space on that UMD.

The idea of having a handheld Madden is a good one, and certainly this is better than the Nintendo DS game. True Madden addicts are loyal fans who have to have a Madden fix daily, on the train, bus or the subway. Hey, as long as they use the headphones so I don't have to hear middling, grade D-celebrity-dating bands like Good Charlotte on the Madden soundtrack, I'm totally down with the obsession.

It's no news to you that there's a huge push at game companies to make more intense and intelligent games playable for new gamers and casual gamers. This trend appears in Madden NFL 09 on the PSP in the form Rookie mode that's quite a breeze to play. If you're a hardcore gamer, you won't mind that new folks are getting into the landmark football game through a mode that's technologically a no-brainer to play. Here, the X button rules the roost, and it'll get a newbie playing Madden quicker than Chad Pennington was made a second-string quarterback once Brett Favre stormed into the Jets' training camp.