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Madden 2006 Review - Xbox

A lot of gamers out there really hate EA, some of it unjustified. When EA announced it had exclusive NFL rights in making games earlier in the year, more people jumped on the EA hate bandwagon. Lots of people said that EA are just cash hungry and won't push themselves and make a mediocre update because they have monopolised yet another market. Read how wrong those haters were.

Gameplay

The biggest addition to Madden 06 is the vision cone, it totally changes the way you play the game. Now users can only pass accurately to a receiver if a receiver is in their cone of vision i.e. the vision cone. To move the cone you can either use the right analog stick or you can hold down the right trigger and the corresponding receiver's button. The main advantage of the vision cone is it allows you to use EA's other new feature, precision passing. Now you can pass high, low or lead you receiver to the left or the right. Even if you do select a good play, passing precision really helps out. Great quarterbacks such as Peyton Manning and Brett Favre (well, maybe not this year) will have cones that take up almost the entire field while developing quarterbacks i.e. shit such as J.P. Losman will have very small cones. Using the cone requires some common sense, you can set you cone before the snap on a specific receiver, or to have the cone centred in the middle of the field. But remember, eyeing off a receiver straight away with an aware cornerback is just screaming for an interception.

Superstar mode is an interesting addition to the Madden Franchise. Now you can create a character or export your created character from NFL Street 2 or NCAA 06 Football (which doesn't apply to us poor Aussies as it wasn't release here). To start off with you enter your basic details such as your name, height and weight. Next you can choose your parents (would be handy for some people in real life hey?) and perform an IQ test which determines your statistics. Then you declare yourself for the draft, hire an agent where you could be playing for the successful Indianapolis Colts or the dreadful Green Bay Packers. After this you will practice for your team to try and raise your statistics to go up the depth chart. In between you can go to the tattoo parlour to get some ink or to the barbers to get a new do'. Heck, it sounds a little bit like San Andreas hey? You can also go to your computer and check in on your fan site, yes, you have friends in Madden, albeit virtual ones. A webmaster has set up a virtual website with displays your achievements and statistics. Then it's time for training camp followed by the regular season. Just because it's superstar mode doesn't mean you can't control other players. All the games are just like (continued next page)