ootball season has just begun its preseason rituals, and that means the football games are about to hit the consoles.  While Midway’s unlicensed Blitz title is waiting in the wings, and Sony canned their football project, EA Tiberon has the entire NFL license to themselves.  Many questioned the fact that EA may lighten up on the innovation factor since they’ve wiped out the competition, and they’ve got the next generation creeping up on them, but fortunately this is not the case.  Madden NFL 06 has incorporated a number of new features that have not only changed the way you think about certain elements of a football videogame, but they’ve added two things that have revolutionized football videogames more than anything else this generation.

The biggest additions in Madden NFL 06 are the new Quarterback Vision Control and Precision Placement.  Quarterback Vision shows you on screen where your quarterback is looking by highlighting a cone of vision where your quarterback will be the most accurate.  After you pick your play you can either choose which player your quarterback will focus his vision, or you can have your quarterback focus his vision in the middle of the field.  After the snap your quarterback’s vision will follow the receiver you initially chose, or you have the option of changing players by holding down R and pressing a button for a corresponding receiver, or by moving the right analog stick.  Throwing a pass to a player that’s in your line of sight will give you an accuracy bonus, and throwing out of your line of sight will have a better chance of not being a completion or worse yet, an interception.  Not every quarterback’s vision is the same, and some quarterbacks like the Pittsburg Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger has an extremely narrow cone of vision, whereas Vikings’ Daunte Culpepper had a medium cone of vision.  But there are some quarterbacks like Green Bay’s Brett Favre or Colts quarterback Peyton Manning who almost have the whole field open to them, so depending on who’s tossing for your team, you may have to manage your quarterback vision a bit more.   To keep things fair and realistic, the opponent AI can see where you are looking, so it may be in your best interest to switch up your field of vision if you feel as if your opponents are reading your plays too accurately. 

Culpepper drops back to pass

Another addition which plays slightly hand-in-hand with quarterback vision is the new Precision Placement element.   When you’re passing to a player, you now have the ability to place your pass where you want to.  Need to toss that pass ahead or behind your receiver a bit to avoid who’s covering them?  How about throwing a pass to their ankles, or throwing a high pass when you’re receiver is in double coverage and you know you have some height advantage?  This is where precision passing comes in.  By moving the d-pad or analog stick either up, down, left, or right while you’re selecting the receiver you’re throwing to, you’ll be able to pull off these moves.  Between the quarterback vision and precision passing, I have no idea why no one has come up with these elements before.  Having the opportunity to throw off your opponents by changing where you’re looking, and then being able to land a pass where you want to alone make this year’s Madden the best yet.  However, for those of you who don’t like these features, EA gives you the option to turn them both off.

NFL Superstar Mode is also one of the biggest additions to the Madden franchise, which is a unique spin on create-a-player, and can extend the life of a character created by either NFL Street 2, or NCAA Football 06.  Essentially this is just an extension of the Race for the Heisman mode from NCAA Football 06.  At the beginning of NFL Superstar Mode, you choose your birth parents which will determine your DNA.  Your parents’ attributes will determine which position you are suited for (you can switch positions later if need be), as well as your stats, physical skills, immediate exposure or higher awareness.  If you don’t like the set of parents you’re given, you can select to get another random pair.  If you turn down one set of parents they’re gone for good, so choose wisely.  After you select your parents, you’ll have the opportunity to create your name, height, weight, hand, position, number, and what college you played for.  Then, you can tweak your body settings, how muscular or fat your body is, as well as how much your equipment is shown from under your uniform.

What is EA trying to say here?

Once all the above is finished, you’ve created your character, and you’ll enter your apartment – which is a small one bedroom place since you have yet to make it big.  This is where you can check your e-mail, view your personal website, visit the world map, look at your schedule, and modify your appearance by looking at the mirror.  The first two weeks are rather slow, you meet your mentor – Terrell Davis, you get interviewed, you sign an agent, take an IQ test, and then wait patiently for the draft.  By going through these drills you’re basically configuring one of 60 possible player personas that are in the game.  Interview questions are more for personality, but IQ questions range from personality type questions to math or English questions.  Teams don’t want to draft a dufus, and the better your IQ could be the determining factor on getting on a better team or not.  Then it’s on to the draft where you watch the ticker spit out pick by pick as you hope your name gets called.

In my play test I created two different players.  Of course, first off I wanted to be a quarterback, and the parents that I chose had the father as an executive producer who liked to kayak, and had an IQ of 87.  The mother was a SWAT team member, was into cave exploration, and had an IQ of 135.  I got a 50% on the IQ test, and I was drafted in the third round, 19th pick by the Cincinnati Bangles.  My second character I made a wide receiver, and my father was a stuntman, enjoyed model railroads, and had an IQ of 103.  My mother was an assistant producer, liked jigsaw puzzles, and had an IQ of 102.  I scored 80% on the IQ test, and I was picked by the Buffalo Bills in the third round, 22nd pick.

After you’re picked, it’s off to training camp, and preseason.  This is where you can improve your player by repeating practice drills over and over.  Do well in a practice and your player will get a boost in ratings.  Since both of my players were drafted, I started out third string on both teams.  I did mediocre in practice which kept my wide receiver at third string, and still allowed my player some playing time come the start of a game, but the quarterback just sat on the bench until I switched up the roster.

A few weeks into preseason and my wide receiver was offered a movie deal.  When you accept a movie deal you are shown five lines of dialogue which you have to repeat by selecting from multiple choice answers.  It’s relatively easy, and the more accurate your line choices affect how well your movie does.

Between the onslaught of practices, you’ll receive loads of text messages and voicemails from Terrell Davis, tips on your appearance from the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, updates about your fan site from the webmaster, and more.  Most likely after every day you’ve completed something, someone will leave you a message or a tip about something, which can be quite helpful.  I am concerned about Terrell, though.  He’ll leave you so many messages you’ll begin to worry if the man has a life or a sick fascination with you.

Overall, while some people will really get into this mode, it really didn’t do it for me.  I felt the grind hit when I went into my third practice and barely noticed any improvement in my player.  The whole movie thing seems a little strange for me, considering I got offered a movie deal being a third string wide receiver?  When was the last time any football player – let alone a third stringer – was in an actual movie?  Granted, I know with the movie and endorsement deals they’re trying to flesh out this mode more, but I just became rather bored quickly, and ran back to my franchise to do what I wanted to do in the game – play football with my team.  I understand that EA Tiberon wants us to feel like we’re going through the motions of getting into the NFL as a rookie, but I just felt a lack of excitement, especially when I had to play for Cincinnati or Buffalo.

Madden NFL 2005 introduced the hit stick to defense, and this year the offense fights back with the truck stick.  The truck stick (right stick) gives your running backs and receivers an extra boost to break tackles.  This can really come in handy when you’re looking at 3rd or 4th down and inches, and you need that little bit more to get across the line.   Just as you had to prepare a second ahead of time if you were going to use the hit stick, you’ll have to do the same if you want to utilize the truck stick.  The truck stick can also be used to perform back jukes, but for some reason EA decided to not allow left and right jukes to be performed with the right stick as well.  The only reason I can see why they do this is because this wouldn’t allow the player to press sprint and juke at the same time, but hopefully this is changed by the time the Xbox 360 version is released this fall.

The Cheese seems to love this

Online modes seemed to be even more robust this year, and this year the tournament structure is more polished, and there are specific rooms set up that only allow you to play against people that are your own rank.  Also by utilizing the EA Locker you can share files and finally play franchise games online, and view all sports standings with the ticker.  While all this is well and good, my personal favorite new addition is how EA Sports Fantasy Football is incorporated into Madden NFL 06.  After linking your Gamer Tag to your Fantasy Football team you’ll be able to keep an eye on your progress of your Fantasy Football team each week, see your last week’s standings, as well as get updates on your trade offers while you’re playing Madden online.  You can’t manage your team or do any trades, but you can earn milestone trophies in Fantasy Football that appear in your console game.  My Fantasy Football team used free services in the past like Yahoo and NFL.com’s Fantasy Football, but we switched just because of this addition – even though it costs $10 for each team, or $50 for a commissioner.  But if you’ve pre-ordered Madden NFL 06, it’s free.  The backend for commissioners is powered by Stats Inc., and has more powerful features than Yahoo’s Fantasy Football.   To boot, the winner of your league of buddies gets an EA Sports Xbox or PS2 game of their choice.  Granted it costs money (unless you pre-ordered), but so far we’re impressed.  How it all works in practice is unknown since the real football season hasn’t officially started, and the ability to link your Fantasy Football account to your Xbox Live gamer tag is down at press time – but if it changes for the better/worse, we’ll have further updates to this story.

Your Fantasy Football home on the web

Presentation-wise, EA has bettered last year’s outing, which really doesn’t seem to difficult since I wasn’t impressed too much with last year’s version.  Graphically, animations are even smoother than before, and you’ll notice notable inclusions like players crawling over people they flattened, or even jumping over fallen opponents.  There’s a new fly-away camera that gives you a different perspective on players lining up, or players doing flips into the end zone (why they all do flips when you press dive is beyond me).  Also after each successful drive, you’ll get a nice graphical breakdown that shows how you were successful.  Players that perform well also get highlighted once in a while between plays, for example if one player had multiple interceptions or touchdowns.  While Madden doesn’t seem to nearly talk as much, John Michaels gives newly added player factoids that are well timed between breaks in the action.  This has to be one of the smoothest iterations of play-by-play that I’ve heard in quite a while.  All of these touches help the presentation factor a bit, but I still think it’s lacking versus last year’s ESPN NFL 2K5. 

The greatest man to ever play the game

Sticking to the if-it-ain’t-broke-why-wreck-it formula, Madden NFL 06, well, plays like Madden, and overall doesn’t feel that different.  A small tweak that I did notice was there seemed to be more interceptions and fumbles that last year’s version.  While last year I may have one or two interceptions total for both teams, this year it seems every game I’ve played has had at least one fumble, and multiple interceptions.  Infractions rarely seem to happen, and I’ve yet to have multiple penalties on the Pro difficulty since I’ve played – that is unless I accidentally dove at a receiver or punter for giggles.

The last question you may have – which version should you get?  It obviously depends on which system or systems you own.  If you own a PlayStation 2 and a PSP, and are planning on getting Madden NFL 06 for the PSP, you can play your franchise games on either system which is a pretty neat feature.  There will be no connectivity this year between the GBA version and GameCube version (as well as the new DS version).  The Xbox version has the best graphics in all the versions I’ve seen, and also gives you the ability to replace the EA Trax with custom soundtracks.  While currently unknown at this point, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to transfer my Xbox saved games, NFL Superstar, and franchises over to the Xbox 360 version when it’s released during the Xbox 360 launch – but so far, EA has not announced anything about that upcoming version yet.

In a year that Electronic Arts could have just laid down and given gamers a weaker new version of Madden, they’ve really seemed to add some great features.  Personally, I would have liked EA to have taken the time to work on the presentation aspect of the game instead of the NFL Superstar Mode, and given me more of a half-time/post game show with highlights, and more done with replays. I know there are people that are going to really get into NFL Superstar Mode, I just don’t have the patience for it, and would rather play Franchise mode.  Quarterback Vision Control and Precision Placement are two of the most innovative features made to football this generation, and I couldn’t imagine playing a football game without it.  The truck stick evens out the hit stick, and once EA maps jukes to the right stick as well, it’ll be a perfect use of the second analog stick for football games. Overall, EA Tiberon has done a commendable job, and given us current generation gamers a good idea on what next generation is going to play like.

As an added bonus, Game Informer Magazine's Matthew Kato played me in our annual grudge match between his Minnesota Vikings versus my Green Bay Packers in a one-half game.  What was the outcome?  Find out in our media section up above!