Free Games: Madden NFL 08

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Madden NFL 08

It's probably not a surprise to anyone that Madden on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube this year would essentially be on autopilot. The life span for these consoles are rapidly coming to a close, and the likelihood is that most players have probably pushed forward to the 360, Wii, and PlayStation 3 by now. What is surprising, however, is just how much on autopilot the PC installments of EA's megapopular football franchise continue to be. Despite the fact that the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Madden have taken a long leap beyond what the older consoles could deliver, EA has churned out yet another port of the PS2/Xbox/GC version of Madden for the PC in Madden NFL 08. What this means is that you're going to get the same basic upgrades of those versions (though not all of them), the same EA Sports Online system (which hasn't been updated in a long, long time), and the same tired presentation.
To be sure, the game plays just fine, and all told, it's a solid game of football. But considering just how much this version has gotten the shaft in comparison to quite literally every other version of the game, it's hard to recommend it.
With the PC version continuing to rank right around the bottom of the barrel as far as new features and upgrades go, you've got to start wondering if EA even cares about its PC sports games. Yes, it plays fine, but it doesn't play much better than Madden 07 did, and that didn't play much better than Madden 06 did. You can buy the PC version of Madden 08 and find yourself with a reasonably good football game, but given how little that reasonably good football game has evolved from previous reasonably good football games on the PC--and how much better the rest of the Madden crop is this year--you're better off looking to one of the console versions.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Optical Drive Type Required - DVD
Required Video Card - Video card: ATI X1600 series or later; NVIDIA GeForce 7300 or later
1.83GHz or faster Intel Core Duo processor
1GB RAM
6GB free hard-disk space