Madden NFL 09 All-Play (Wii)

This dumbed-down version of Madden can be completely exhilarating ... and completely shocking for true pigskin fans.
8/20/2008 12:00 AM | 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, to near-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.

Depending on how seriously you view football, Madden on the Wii is either going to make you upset enough to want to chop block the designers or enthusiastic enough to add All-Play to your tailgate party. At first, I leaned toward the really upset side. I mean, the temerity of EA -- changing the football rules to have you start so that there are no first downs, only four plays? Sacrilege! The apocalypse is upon us! Four ghostly football players on colts from Baltimore must be heading to the EA offices to spread pestilence as I write. How could John Madden allow it, he who argued with Trip Hawkins 20 years ago, adamant that football on a computer should be the real deal ... or nothing.

And yet, as David Mamet says, things change, especially over the course of 20 years. There are a few dang charming features to Madden NFL 09 All-Play, not the least of which is a 5-on-5 Big Head mode. It's not real football -- there are no first downs, no timed plays, and there's a weird swirl on the grass. But here's the really enchanting part: You get to draw your own receiver routes by using the "A" button on the Wii remote and pointing and clicking on the field. While you can only draw three moves that are angles, this adds creativity to a game that has a lot of last year's cut scenes and play-by-play banter. I wish I could draw curves and not just angles, and more than three angles at that, but it's an engaging feature that should have been brought to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions. Thankfully, it works in the more diverse Franchise mode as well.

In the latter versions, the biggest spin from the EA folks regarding Madden NFL 09 is the idea that the game will adapt to your style of play. Yeah, in the past you've had everything from Rookie to Superstar difficulty modes to help you become accustomed to gridiron play. But this is supposedly a more intelligent thing altogether, although they make it sound more impressive and scientific than it is by calling it the Adaptive Difficulty Engine. It involves carefully testing your abilities before you start the season and taking the results into the season.

While there's no adaptive play here, the Wii version is no slouch, either. Whereas last year's Madden offering on the Wii was too complex when it came to the Wii remote, this year's All-Play is simpler and still has a fair amount of true simulation play . Franchise mode is here, although the playbooks aren't terribly full -- a SpongeBob coloring book as opposed to Tolstoy's "War and Peace," let's say.