Figures and More would like to welcome back reviewer Nick Morano from”the Void.” For his first assignment back, I asked Nick, who does not play sports games, to step outside his comfort zone of RPG’s and review Madden ’09. Here is his unique take on a game he would not normally play and has no prior experience with.

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Well I have finally returned from obscurity to write another review for you all to bask in the warm glow of my outrageous gaming knowledge and expert critiquing. This time is much, much different though. I am writing a review for Madden NFL 09 for the Xbox 360. Now there are a couple of issues involved with this that I must address before I begin the review, lest you all take to the streets in panic that I played a sports game *shudder*.

First of all, I’m a hardcore RPG (role playing game) fanboy and that is my preferred genre of gaming. First Person Shooters usually accompany the rpgs as well (I know odd mix). I don’t play sports games. At all. Ever. Like hell has frozen over in order for me to write this review. Even Satan is down in hell saying “Dude that’s messed up” about me having to write this. But I accept the task because maybe I can bring you some enjoyment.

Secondly, sports games are not video games. Video games were created with the intent of letting you experience a world or adventure you could never experience on your own. Grand Theft Auto is fun for a lot of people because they can beat up hobos and hookers in the game, while in reality they’d get arrested for being retarded. Anyone can be good at sports if they apply themselves and want to be good at sports. Therefore playing in the NFL is an attainable goal while slaying a dragon is not (this site does not endorse the slaying of dragons). With that, I give you my review and hope I don’t come off too biased or anything.

The Madden games have been around for quite sometime. I felt in order to do this right I had to go back and play the previous year’s iteration of the franchise, Madden 08. Now to be fair, these games have excellent gameplay. If you are in to sports games, these have the most fluid and intuitive controls out there. However there is no innovation. There is next to no difference between one year of the game and the next. They might add ONE new concept each year but that’s more as a test run to see if fans like that, and, if they don’t, well then it’s not in next year’s game. The only major difference is that the rosters for every team changes every year. However I never understood why that wasn’t just a download for say 15 bucks. It doesn’t make any sense to go out, spend 50 bucks on a game, to have it be the same thing, just with new players. But aside from that, it’s not a bad game. If you like sports games then, well you’ve already bought it regardless of my opinion but if you haven’t then go splurge on it so Electronic Arts can use that money to make better games like…..pretty much everything else. The gameplay is smooth, the controls are tight, and it is easy for a beginner to pick up and play, just don’t play a friend or you’ll get clobbered. All in all for a sports game it is fairly decent and fun to play. I just can’t stand to play it for more than 20 minutes at a time. There isn’t too much more to say about this game really and I wish there was, feel like I’m letting you all down. There are a lot of fun modes and surprisingly managing your team’s career feels kind of like micro management in an RPG and is very satisfying. Menus are very easy to navigate and this is truly a user friendly and casual gamer friendly game.

Madden NFL ’09 is also available for Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP

Madden NFL 09 gets 4 stars out of 5