Customer Reviews

Madden NFL 2002

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My impressions are primarily based on a 1.4ghz system with a High end 64meg video card (NVidia Geforce2 Pro) & 512mb of ram. I also have a 800mhz CPU which I tested it on. This game is the best current football sim. That said, it is not a great sim, but a good one. It has huge glaring flaws in some of the physics. And EA Sports is quite unreceptive to comments about things other then crashes. In other words, if it runs it's good enough. This is an unfortunate stance.

Graphics: (A-) Very good. Not flawless, but very well done. The weak points in the graphics would be the stadiums. The score board is just a drawing. The crowd and the players on the sidelines are just obvious flat, badly draw, 2d art. The catching, fumbling, and other things involving character animation is not well done. But more or less acceptable.

Sound: (C-) Ok but redundent. The number of different comments John Madden & Pat Summerall do is very very limited. You will hear the same exact comment a dozen or more times in a game. Quite dull. The stadium sound is decent. But the thing I miss the most is the taunting. Last years model had the funniest things the players would say. It added a nice bit of color which is sadly missing.

Play design/Play book: (F) This feature was present in last years model. And while it was weak last year, at least it was there. There is no playbook customization or play design of any kind this year. Very disappointing!

Game Play: (C-) The computer cheats badly (and obviously) and eny level of difficulty. This can be balanced with the sliders, but by default should this be needed?
Other areas such as pass rush, QB skill, etc can NOT be balanced with sliders since any movement has no discernable impact.
With patch 2.21 this part is better. Not perfect, and not really tweakable with the sliders. With default settings, pass rush is still NIL, QB's have an easier time going deep then passing short, etc. I think the most annoying aspect is that hitting the QB 20+ times in a game has no impact on his ability to play. It would seem that the QB being pummled should have at least some reduction in his skill.

Franchise mode:(C-) It works mostly. However the draft is heavy skewed towards just a few positions. Everyone in the league will soon have an all star TE or 3, and more FB's then you can shake a stick at. The trading module is pretty broken. The computer will never offer a trade. The computer teams pretty much don't sign free agents either. Want to help the computer?? Sign a bunch a free agents and trade them to the computer teams for low draft picks.
Player movement is too limited. Players seldom have comeback seasons, or the such. If they are young and deemed to have potentional they can, and typically will, improve. However there is no in season learning. There is no moving from position to postion. Want to play Rod Woodson at corner like the good old days? He will only play there with out of position penalties. It is not uncommon to draft a player with great potential and move him to another position. The NFL has several examples of former LB's playing Safety & so on.

Bugs/Crashes: (B) It doesn't crash often with the patches. A nice change from last year where it took 5 patches to improve system stability.
This time it was reasonablyh stable after 2 patches. It did not like my NVidia graphics card until I updated the driver. It would re-set the card's clock speed and ram speed to the lowest programmable level leaving the system partially unstable and the game unplayable. This was NOT a bug in the driver, since this is the ONLY game to ever have this problem. Updating to the latest drivers from NVIDIA.com solves this issue.
Giving it a "B" here is clearly being a bit too charitable, since I am not factoring in having to update drivers, and apply several game fixes. But if you do the same, you will probably also be pleased with the over all stablity. If you don't take these steps, be prepared for crashes, lockups, dumps to windows, etc.

Over all: (C) It does somethings quite well. It is pleasing visually. With a few obvious and glaring exceptions, it has most of the features we want, they just don't all work very well. Bottom line is this. I would rate it lower if there were anything to compare it to, but there isn't. Sadly, This is isn't the best PC football game, it is the only one.

Improved from last year:
--Player ratings are a tiny bit more detailed.
--graphics are improved.
--Stability is improved (comparison after the 2 patches, 2001 with all 5 or 6 patches is equally stable).
--Better sliders, most offer seperate tuning of computer and human players.
--Online play is supposed to work this year. I haven't bothered yet, based on how very badly it worked last year.

Worse then last years model:
--Playbook customization is gone.
--play design is gone.
--the hurry up clock is gone. And since the game manages time so badly you have to play with 8 to 10 minute quarters to compensate.
--sound. Removing the taunting and 'smack' talk removed much of the color from the game play.

Over all, it's slightly better then last years but not by much. It's disappointing to see how many of the flaws carried forward. Even most disappointing to see features being dropped.

If you're looking for a realistic football sim, definitly DO NOT buy Madden 2002.

#1. The pass defense is WAY out of whack! The computer will complete about 90% of it's passes against you, and complete all of it's long bombs. I don't know how on earth EA let this game get out! (and every TE is a superstar catching 15 passes a game)

#2. The screen pass is now impossible to do. Half the time the ball lands in front of the player, and even if you player does catch it, you are very lucky to get back to the line of scrimmage.

#3. The computer can't run the ball worth jack. The game play is so unbalanced in this way.

Ea also got rid of the accel clock feature, so you have to play 8 minute quarters to have a realistic game. (as in number of plays)

Don't listen to the reviews that say this is the greatest sim ever, they are most likely marketing plants from EA sports. They do this with every game. Go to any Madden forum and you will hear the wide spread complaints about this game.

I have to agree with everything the last person wrote. The computer passes like a god..... it is almost impossible to get through his line. He can't run worth a lick though, making the game very one dimensional and uninteresting on defense. Almost every game I have played ended in scores of 50+ points to 30+ points. If the AI was better on Defense and the computer ran more and better on offense, this game would be awesome. Also there is no option to create custom plays. On a good note, the graphics are incredible and the motion of the players are ultra-realistic. Just a few tweaks and this game would be incredible (I hope EA is listening?!?)

I was so (...) when I brought this game, that I considered returning it. 800 yard passing games were a regular occurence. I even subbed in Warren Sapp at QB and he threw for 550 yards and six scores. All that has changed with their most recent patch. This is football the way it was meant to be played. You will be amazed at the change.

I've heard good things about the PS2 version of M2k2, but the PC version has serious gameplay issues.

Namely, the defensive secondary is nonexistent. 500-600 yard games from 3rd string QBs with bad offensive linemen and poor receivers are the order of the day. You could assemble a team of All-Star defensive players and pit them against the worst NFL Europe team and their 3rd string QB, and I guarantee you the NFL Europe team's QB will throw for over 350 yards and a QB rating over 100. They'll probably lose, but the scores in M2k2 games are very, very high. 65-54 is NOT an unusual score. I've tried every fix imaginable, and nothing helps. If EA patches this big problem, this could be a great game. The graphics are much better than last year's version.

After playing the demo, which doesnt include many of the special additions...player cards, season, fantasy draft, and create-a-team, i hav found that even the playstation 2 version is no better in graphics then the computer version. Choose from a number of different camera angles, choose plays normally, select a player for a hot route, or ask madden. The running game is the most improved from last year. You can actually gain more then a yard on the run unlike some madden games, but you arent going to have it easy getting a 15 yard gain every down. One of the few problems and errors i found was alot of times the quartback ends up throwing the ball off balance but still perfectly to hit the receiver every time.Also, i had a little trouble configuring my controller.

I played only the demo of this game, but I played it several times and enough to comment on it, though the demo concept is simple: Game starts in the 4th with 5:00 to play, select the Ravens or the Giants and continue the game which is 24-7 Ravens.

I played the Ravens and found that the ease of completing passes (I was 12/14 with 253 yards at the end) was ridiculous. I simply repeated the Shotgun 4WR Hail Mary play to go deep , 50 yards each time. The AI of this game is good, but the passing defense is awful. I also got bored of the endless "Hut Hut, Huuutttt Hut Hut Hut Hut H-Hut Hut Hut Huuut Huuut" droning from Kerry Collins, who would give the other team time to go into the stands and get a hot dog. There were very few flags, except False Start flags. You can't taunt the opponents, there's no key to push the other player, etc. It's also basically easy to have the punter pass to any old guy on 4th and 25. I liked the plays part, the graphics, and the simple gameplay. But when the game was over, it was 61-13 for me.

This game has great graphics and it's a lot of fun to play. If you have an upper-end PC, you will be able to enjoy all the beautifully done graphic and sound details of the game, but you can change graphic settings to better meet your PC. Unless you are comfortable playing action games with a keyboard, you'll need a 8 to 10 button gamepad to control your players and play calling. Madden NFL 2002 supports Microsoft and Gravis Gamepad Pro. The one major flaw in Madden NFL 2002 is in its passing defense AI. Even after I edited all my defensive players to the point that I exceeded my team salary cap by some 12 million dollars, I still managed to give up over 500 yards passing to Anthony Wright and the Dallas Cowboys, EA really needs to put out a patch for this.

I installed this game on my Dell PIII 800 Windows ME box and experienced no technical problems. Users who have had problems playing Madden NFL 2002 in WinME boxes can check with EA Tech Support to see if the hardware (i.e. video card) or software (i.e. an antivirus package) in their PCs are causing some conflicts or problems with the game.

Every EA sports game I've ever played (Baseball, Hockey, Football) emphasizes offense over defense. I guess, since the game is for the masses, they don't want to frustrate or bore non-purists of these games. As in the case of Madden NFL 2002, prepare for wide open, high scoring games. My average game's final score is usually about 56-49. The graphics and action are phenomenal. I find the commentary by Summerall and Madden to be too repetitive. It gets especially tiring after playing several games and you've already heard the same comments 10+ times before.

I also don't care for the way the AI attempts to even things out by the game's end. If I'm ahead in the 4th quarter, suddnly, my team will turn over the ball every third play and the opponent will move the ball at will against me until the opponent has caught up. Similarly, if I'm behind in the 4th quarter, suddenly, I become a world beater.

These quips aside, the game is fun as long as you don't expect true NFL type games.

when i started my first exhibition game, something about this year's version grabbed me instantly. this version of madden returns the ea sports franchise to its glory. the game is intense and realistic. the graphics are simply mind blowing. everything about this game screams REAL. the gameplay is so fluid and smooth that the simulation grabs you from the beginning and you are grasped by THE GAME. prepare to waste hours away! in regards to the play of the secondary [not being good]: i think it is true. akili smith ran game on my defense. tony banks, (the backup to TRENT DILFER last year?!?!?!) who is now on the cowboys, looked like the second coming of troy aikman! but what i learned to do is to BLITZ. dont give the opponent's QB much time to see the field and too much time to make a decision. i've been blitzing about 80% of the time and my secondary's performance has been much more successful. nevertheless, the game is FUN and addictive. control of the players is smooth and the hits are hard in this digital replication of the NFL. you wont be disappointed!