Still Your Father's Madden NFL Football

Now, I don't mean to be hasty. It has only been a week now since everyone's favorite (read: only) NFL-licensed game hit shelves, but I can't help but shudder at every review that rolls out for the latest iteration of EA Sports' John Madden football: Madden NFL 2008.5 2009.

The newest Madden, while a good game, lacks what we as gamers deserve: innovation.

Yeah, I'm going there.

Madden has been getting roughly the same score from all of the major publications since Madden '07. There's nothing wrong with the games being showered with 8.0's and 8.5's, I just have a problem with how these games are scored.

The IGN's, Gamespot's, EGM's, etc., all dole out scores on a 10.0 scale. Sure, the system is flawed, and there are far superior alternatives like Kotaku, but it's not the score. The score is adequate, for what it's worth.

The one thing sports games aren't subjected to are marks for innovation. This means that no matter how many times an A++ caliber game gets rehashed and relabeled, it will always hover around a score plateau, which is what we're seeing with Madden.

The next-gen Madden series is now four years old.

Last year, when he turned three he was cute. He did a lot of things right, and he escaped his terrible twos which plagued everyone around him. He spoke a little better, his mechanics were a little smoother, and he stopped shitting in his diapers at a constant rate.

Now that he's four, he's getting ready for pre-school, can speak in full sentences, and he looks a little different; a little taller, and a little wiser. But he's still a little four year old. He's temperamental, lacks control, and still likes shitting in his pants.

Madden is supposed to be 20 years old. He's supposed to be out getting hammered and waking up with his pants off, cold and alone in an alley somewhere in South San Francisco after a 49ers game.

He's supposed to be relatively mature and advanced. And if he's like most of us then he should be relatively intelligent compared to the younger versions of himself.

EA Sports is not being held accountable for their utter lack of innovation in the Madden franchise games recently.

What happened to the strides we saw in the PS2 era? Save for players feet not touching the ground and sidelines full of players sporting number 88, the game functioned pretty damn well.

It was fully-featured, sported few technical hiccups, and while it didn't show leaps of improvements each year, the core game that was expanded upon was good enough—something that can-absolutely-not be said for this generation.

So What Should Be Done?
Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV has laid out what appears to be a very well placed plan for extending the life of their game. In the form of downloadable content, GTA will be rejuvenated with add-ons that will provide hours of gameplay to the core game mechanic.

Why couldn't this be adopted in the sports gaming world? Here's my proposal:

• Create a base game from the ground up which can right the wrongs done by much of the core game mechanic.
• Every so often release DLC which extends the life, adds features, and changes the game without subjecting us, as consumers, to spending $60 for an expansion pack. Stop giving the fans a reason to dismiss the game as an expensive roster update!
  
  Something akin to the 2k series and their Highlight Reel add-on for NBA 2k8-2k9 would be a good starting point. Sure, the Highlight Reel is probably on the game disc, but with 120 GB HDD's I don't imagine this can't be in some way, shape, or form impossible.
• Release a new Madden every two or three years, as opposed to every August. Make an effort to completely change the experience from the previous version, so the presentation doesn't feel so stale. Take the time to add enough features that can't be ushered in through DLC and more people will be enticed to buy the game.

Now, I must admit that there could be potential pitfalls to this plan. EA is more than likely holding back some of the better features for future iterations. But at least there would be a better business plan in line.

You wouldn't expect Bioshock 2 to be the same game as the original. Outside of the story, we all expect there to be new gameplay features, a decent amount of innovation, and something that has makes us say "wow." We expect to see something that was built upon.

New rosters, camera angles, and thinly veiled online "leagues" (let's be honest, they're tournaments) don't excite me. But hit stick-esque style innovation does.

Do what's right, Peter. It's your choice...

CHOOSE WISELY.