Customer Reviews

Madden NFL 2006

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

Playing Madden in the palm of your hand is a nice feeling, but if you're like me, it doesn't feel totally right. The controller setup for the PSP simply does not fare well with Madden PSP, or probably with any football game for that matter that would ever come out. The lack of a true analog stick hurts the control as football requires precision. But for what we get, it gets the job done. Due to the lack of buttons, they did away with the hit stick and truck stick on both offense and defense. There is also no longer any "play maker control" for your defense as you can't change their direction before the play. The the rest seems to be there, spin, head down, sprint, dive, etc.

The game suffers from a plethora of "stuttering" throughout the game and it took me nearly 5 minutes to simulate through the "pre-season" games on the franchise mode. Simming games should take maybe a minute, but 5 minutes? At the beginning of a matchup, you'll think the game is crashed, but it's actually still loading, well after it's done loading. The game seems to hicup between different transitions of the game. For example, when my defender intercepted a pass, about a "2" second delay initiated, it somewhat takes the flow away from the game, and it happens more than it should. It also occurs on dropped passes, fumbles, turnovers, sacks, etc. It should have been fixed before leaving the doors of E.A., but they wanted their money fast. When it's not stuttering, it seems to play basically pretty smooth. It looks better than a PSOne game and probably not as good as PS2 title. It's somewhat in between, but the player models actually look very good. The passing game is pretty smooth and the running game works well too. But once again that controller might give you fits, especially on defense. I just can't used to the control scheme.

The sound is pretty basic and the crowd noise is actually quite bad and reminded me of the old days of cartridge football. Fan reaction is basically non-existent as they don't seem to react after a big play or touchdown, E.A. defintely skimpped here. Al Michaels and John Madden say their still infamous, allbeit annoying commentary.

As a whole, it still plays and feels like Madden in the palm of your hand, and fans of the series will like the ability to take this on the road. I actually liked playing the coach mode through a franchise that lets you choose the plays, line formations and let the computer make the play itself. It's kind of like being a coach, and I had fun with it.

The controls are not feeling right at home with me though and most will want to stick with the console version. Some will divulge into the "Franchise" and mini-camp modes to keep themselves entertained, but me, I'm stickin with my console to get my Madden fix, at least this year anyway. I give it a 3, out of out 5.

Essentially, that's the review. I have eight other games and only one of them has ever crashed the system on me. Madden does it regularly. Now I can cope with the annoying bugs mentioned all over the place, and the slow load times, and frequent pauses, becasue when it works, it's great.

But when OUT-OF-THE-BOX, it comes up with a "load failure" message and then proceeds to crash on the second franchise game of the season every time, killing the system, this game becomes my first ever 1-star rating.

Well done, EA. This sets a new low for production quality.

Everyone has reviewed this game expressing the shut-down bug. I will attest to it as well. It's terrible. I have already returned the game. My local store bent their rules and accepted the game back for a refund. Lucky for me or I would have been stuck with a terrible game.

The potential for this game was great it just failed to deliver. I would consider picking it up again if the bug is fixed. Madden for PS2 this year is terrific. It's unfortunate EA took advantage of me by shipping a game full of bugs. I will think twice before I spend money on another EA product.

I must add that EA's customer service is horrendous. The tech support department responded to my emails with suggestions like "try power cycling your PSP" and "try it out in another PSP and see if that still happens." Not to mention it's very difficult to find a number to call and once you find a number to call don't be surprised if the point the blame at Sony. That is what they did with my call. Lucky for Sony I am smart enough to realize that this problem is with the EA game and not the Sony PSP device.

Graphics : Amazing
Gameplay : Excellent
Bugs : LOTS
Load Times : Pretty Long
Online Play : Buggy

I had high hopes for this game... I'm no sports game addict, but I do enjoy a football game or two. I purchased this game with hopes of playing online, running a franchise, and just enjoying the game. The graphics were amazing and the gameplay itself is pretty decent. And that's where the good stuff stops..

Load times were the first thing I noticed. I can understand the game loading the field, players, etc at the beginning of the game. But must we access the UMD between EVERY SINGLE play? This totally kills the enjoyment for me.. I suppose it's loading the announcer voices, but I'm not sure...

Next I tried online play. After about 20 tries, only once getting into a game and having it die at the coin toss, I've given up. Buggy. Broken. ARGH! (The internet connection was fine, by the way. I played World of Warcraft instead. On a laptop, using the wifi connection)

So, I went after franchise play. Little tip here. When you have about 5 seconds left in the game, save it. When the game is over and you choose "End Game", chances are the game will crash and reset the psp. Extremely annoying. The workarounds EA posted are laughable and just don't work.

Overall I think this game had *HUGE* potential, but crashed hard just after the starting line. Perhaps if they tried playing the game before they shipped it?

This is the buggiest game I have ever had the misfortune to own on any portable system dating all the way back to the original gameboy.

Here is a laundry list of some of the problems:

- NFL Icons load screen appears with a name but no picture or a seizure inducing picture that flashes on/off spastically.

- The kick meter sometimes doesn't appear properly. You can work around this by pausing and unpausing.

- Pre-game commentary does not work half the time.

- Assistant coach points don't work properly. Sometimes your point allocations are rejected for no apparent reason.

And finally for the coup de grace:

- Franchise mode games will either lockup or shut off your PSP randomly throughout the games. I've never been able to fully finish a franchise mode game. The closest I've got is the clock ticks down at the end of the 4th quarter and then boom... it's locked up. You can save your game frequently and try to tip toe through the mine field but it's still going to happen sooner or later. Some of the time when it crashes it will corrupt your profile meaning you can't even load your savegame because it's toast.

Imagine having a DVD that randomly powers down your entertainment system near the end of the movie. Imagine a book with the last 50 pages torn out. Now you are getting the picture.

I'm not even going to get into the other problems with this game such as excessive load times and stalling because those I can live with. But when you can't even finish a game that is what's called a "game stopper" and it's the worst kind of bug there is. How this thing was released to the market is beyond me.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME UNTIL EA EITHER DOES A RECALL OR COMES UP WITH A DOWNLOADABLE PATCH/FIX FOR THE CRASHING PROBLEM.

I cannot stress this enough. Without the crashing problem even with all the other faults I would give this game a 4/5. With the crashing problem it's not worth the aggravation.

Finally, if you think I am exaggerating or making this up, I encourage you to visit any of the PSP forums out there where you will see my comments echoed by countless other frustrated Madden 06 owners.

I am a huge fan of both the PSP and Madden. The combination of Madden on the PSP was a matched made in heaven, until I played it.

The game play is decent, it feels like Madden and is fun. Its fun until you run into all the bugs. Most I could live with, but it actually causes PSP to shut down. This is unacceptable, and as of today (9/29/05) Electronic Arts (the publisher of the game) has not offered any solution. I would stay far away from this game.

I bought my PSP at midnight on it's debut night at Wally World. I do love it to death but it's not quite a big success in my mind just yet. The future I believe will be awesome though for the PSP. With these game developers making games for the PSP,PS2,and PS3, I understand they have alot on their plate. But this is Bull$**t! I love Madden football and I was just waiting and waiting for this game to come out. But I could of waited another 6 months if it meant for a better game. Other reviewers have said it all. The glitches and pauses just suck. There are other problems but everyone else has covered that already. Why do these game developers (especially EA) rush these titles out. We are gonna jump on a Madden game no matter what, and you know they know that. I would be embarassed if I was an EA employee because of this game. I will say in it's defense that it does have some good qualities. 1. It's football on the go. 2. The graphics , although not real impressive, are fine to me. The game just doesn't flow right with the pauses and delays. The load times are pretty long but it is Madden and with all the rosters and stuff I expected that. I realize when a new system comes out it takes awhile for the developers to learn it so I know the games in the future will be kick ass.

This message is for EA - Make PSP NCAA 06 Football with the fixed glitches that are in Madden and i'll forever be a fan!!!!!

I enjoy playing this game and will continue to play it. As others have pointed out, it crashes in Franchise mode, and there is also a problem with "stuttering." When it pauses in between interceptions, kickoffs, 4th downs and such, it makes you hold your breath for a second wondering if it's going to crash again.

I save almost after every score I make so I don't have to play the whole game over again. This definitely gets annoying because the franchise file size is huge (it takes about 50 seconds to save to your memory card!). EA really messed up on this one. Is there anything we, as customers, can do about this?

With EA's exclusive hold no the NFL license it was a shock that they released a Madden game on the PSP that underwent absolutely no QA testing. A shock in bizarro world anyway. EA did not let laggy play, long load times, sporadic crashing, flickering screens and non-existant online play stop them from releasing this craptacular excuse for a football game. If this game was a football team, then it would be a football team made up of 3rd grade girls.

Franchise mode crashes sporadically after the game is over (no save for you!). According to EA support the online mode is really not ready yet, it's still in testing!

And still they suxored me for $50US.

I understand a patch will be out in September of 2006, but it will cost $50. </sarcasm>

The graphics are great... the gameplay is great... this is pretty much the console game packaged into a portable system. EA even added exclusive mini games that are addicting and fun. The loading times are bad, but so are all games for the PSP, so that doesn't affect my review.

So why does Madden 2006 deserve a 1 star? Franchise mode just flat out doesn't work. After a few games on Franchise your PSP will randomly freeze and shut down while you are playing. Nothing is saved, you have to reboot your PSP, try again, only to have the same thing happen. EA has yet to put out an official response to this but there are people all over their forums complaining.

They also promised us online play, but the servers are bad and 95% of games get disconnected. And if you get disconnected they give you the loss. I have an 0-10 record and I haven't actually lost a game yet.

The two biggest selling points for this game, Franchise and Online play don't work. Sure this game is fun for some mini games once and a while and maybe an occasional single player game, but it is definatley not worth the $50.