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Disappointments
I bought Madden 08 when it came out, and other than my XBox RRoDing three times during the following year after that (causing me to hardly get to play it at all), I felt like it was the first "halfway decent" Madden for the 360. They finally added Create-A-Team, but it sucked because you could not create custom playbooks, you could not name your head coach, you could not customize the logo beyond the lame ones they provided, etc. etc.
Now then I heard that Madden 09 Collector's Edition comes with Head Coach 09, and right on the box it says "Seamlessly Integrate Created Plays with Madden 09 Playbooks". Hey, that sounds awesome! Also the guys at Gamestop told me that the created teams could be used in the new online league feature. So there I was, imagining creating a custom team, with custom plays, and competing in a league against all other people with their custom teams and custom plays. Trading plays with my friends, etc.
Nope.
First of all the created team is exactly the same as in 08: same lame logos (wanna be the sharks, the devils, the radioactive footballs, or the .. uh, whatever the hell that building looking thing is?). Even NCAA 04 for Gamecube had more options for logos and different kinds of fields. I would have been satisfied with simple letters for example.
Second of all you cannot use created teams nor created plays in online play, from what I can tell. Whether it be in a custom league or even an unranked match. Why is that? All I ever do is online play; so what is the point of a created team or created plays if I can't use them in online play? To me, this is hardly "seamless integration with Madden 09 playbooks" ... that's a lot of seams. (I could understand if they only allowed custom plays in unranked matches, or had separate rankings for custom plays and teams, but this is just lame).
Third of all, there's a lot of other stuff wrong with this game, as op mentioned. I pretty much agree with all that the previous two posters have said.
But let me also add that the laggy response to control input in online play is still the same as in Madden 08.
The user manual is anemic -- it's only a few pages long and goes into absolutely no detail whatsoever. For example, there is literally no mention at all of the Create-a-Play feature in the Madden 09 manual.
The main menu system is very poorly organized. I won't go into detail on this right now since I don't have it in front of me, but suffice it to say, it could be cleaned up vastly. What's more, it just feels laggy -- not crisp like the old versions used to.
There are a bunch of new features that are simply worthless. The ability to watch worse-than-YouTube-quality streaming video of NFL news and such? Who cares? Don't they realize we have the whole internet on our own computers, and probably also digital cable in high definition? Also, "Madden Test" and "Mini Games" -- give me a break. I wouldn't complain about these added features except I just wish there was a way to remove them from the menu, since what you end up with here is a menu containing tons of stuff you will never use, making it harder to find the features that are what you bought the game for. Also, I wouldn't complain about these features if they had delivered improvements in the above areas that I do find fault with.
Once again, I think this is a clear demonstration of exactly why EA having an exclusive license to produce NFL (and for that matter, NCAA) football games was one of the worst things ever for the sports gaming world. The only benefit is towards EA's pocketbook. But they have not cycled that extra income back into making the game better. Rather they have gotten quite lazy with it. It would be much better for sports gamers were the NFL to terminate EA's exclusive license, since some competition from 2K Sports (and whoever else) would surely be a good thing!
Still, I will play Madden 09 if only because I love football and it is the only option. The games can still be fun and exciting. The graphics have been improved. There are finally Pass Interference calls, and QB's throw much more inaccurately when they are running backwards (things like that). But I think EA should offer an upgrade path for next year's Madden; it is a crime on the high seas to charge full price to customers who bought the software less than a year ago, especially considering the "new" version is little more than a roster update, a graphics update, and mostly useless added features.
-VR-
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