Madden NFL 2006 Description:

Madden NFL 2006 review:
2 stars (Broken for high-end ATI cards.) - Well Madden is my favourite PC game. I invariably buy it the first day of its release every year and play it till mastery. Madden 2007 was a substantial improvement over 2007. It offered decent defense and it was possible to stop the ridiculous long bomb issue that plagued 2007. 2006 on the surface seems to offer a great deal more depth it terms of gameplay than before. The precision passing thing is a great addition. Making it harder to score was also the most challenging thing. Previous games were too easy as once you knew the plays you could advance the ball upfield unhindered. However there are some significant hurdles to be overcome before you can get to the goodness underneath. The key mapping is just horrid and there is no way on the PC of remapping them. I use a Logitech Wingman Rumblepad Cordless and in order to change the precision passing receiver that you are locked on to prior to the snap you need to hold "A" and then press the key of the receiver that you want to lock on to pre-snap. This is ridiculous. If you have to press two keys at once they need to be on different sides of the gamepad - this is how they work. Alas not in Madden 2006, you need to hold multiple buttons down with the same finger. However an even greater issue is the performance problems with ATI cards and high end systems. This issues appeared in MVP baseball as well and has now hit Madden as well. There are entire online debates about the issue. Basically on a high end system with ATI cards you get excessive stuttering during gameplay. It doesn't matter wether you turn off compression in the options or not, though this helps, it doesn;t matter if you play it in 640x480 or 1600x1200 the stuttering continues. You can tried the Catalyst 5.6, 5.7, 5.8 drivers it doesn't make any difference, I even tried the zeropoint drivers. Also I tried adjusting the PCI latency values. After two weeks of perservering I am resolved to the fact that the game is broken and I am keenly awaiting a patch to resolve. All my other games work brilliantly, it's just Madden. It's either a patch will fix or I'll have to spend $500 to buy a nVidia card just to get the damn card to work, then I'll only have the controller problem to figure out...
1 stars (Same Issues-Cannot Play) - I am having the same issues as the below reviews. I would love to be able to rate this game, however I cannot because I have not yet been able to play. It locks up on the initial load screen, and as below the only way to remedy is to reboot. I've given up on a solution until an update from EA is available.



P.S.-I have gotten the game to work, though not correctly. By renaming the "music" folder to "music1" the game will play, but without the in-game music!
4 stars (Not perfect but good fun) - Right now Madden '06 is the main game on my PC. Its good fun, mostly great graphics, so for me its worth it. For the hard-core Football fan it might not meet the mark but for the casual gamer it certainly is worth the money. I skipped Madden '05 so I can't compare it but its a great improvement over Madden '04.



First off the bad. You will need a game pad to play this game, but if you don't have one, what are you doing playing sports games on your PC anyway? Secondly there are some graphics glitches and the animated crowd is just plain ugly.



However the game itself is what you are there for and quite frankly its worth it. The Superstar mode is excellent and it plays much closer to the real game than '04 did. Its worth noting that in Superstar mode you do have to take the practice sessions and the "focus" training will improve your chances of winning the next game! Quite probably I will never play in any of the other modes but you know, the reason I bought the game was to have an enjoyabe experience and that is what it delivers.



All in all, it may not be the most realistic football game out there but it certainly is worth picking up!