Finally, a Madden Game Worth Playing

There was actually a midnight release spectacular for Madden 08 at the Hoover Best Buy location in Birmingham, Alabama (we don't usually get a lot of VIP gaming treatment in sweet home Alabama). Not having to work today or anything better to do circa midnight, I drove on over after reading some Madden reviews and picked it up for the PS3 (see previously blog entry for reason why I didn't buy it for the 360).

I'm not much of a football fan, but the thing that I like most about watching and playing football is the tackling and the breaking of tackles. This year, EA finally decided to add a much more realistic tackling system (something that Visual Concepts has been doing well for almost a decade with the 2K series) and it really makes the video game of football fun. In fact, I would say that the tackling in Madden 08 is better executed than in All Pro Football.

I will bet that you can bet your bottom dollar that with all the praise that this entry of Madden is receiving, the incremental update next year will be a little short of short. I'm going to go ahead and predict for next year's entry that EA will add a few small features here and there, update the rosters, and maybe -- if they have time after revelling in the Madden 08 revenues -- get the PS3 version to run at 60fps.

However, I am quite impressed with this year's Madden, and because I will not be playing the 360 for another 5-7 weeks (if that, because who knows once school starts) I will probably trade my copy of All Pro Football 2K8 for Shin Megami Tensai: Persona 3 (provided that it's not delayed every week that it's supposed to be released as it has been since mid-July).