Madden NFL 09

Description

So here's how it works. Every year EA pushes out a portable version of Madden to go along with its main console versions, and every year -- dating as far back as Madden on GBA -- we've waited to see if our highest hopes, gameplay suggestions, or anticipated fixes from the previous year would be included. Take the play calling options, for instance. During the unveiling of GCN's connection cable with the GBA, we instantly thought that GBA-to-Cube connectivity would be used for calling plays for local competition. It's easy, right? Why not make use of the technology? Then, when the DS was announced a few years back, we saw the touch screen an instantly thought "touch play calling; that's where it's at with Madden DS". Every year we push to see EA take the portable reigns and deliver a sports game that really makes use of the hardware, and one that the smaller -- but dedicated -- Nintendo sports community could get into. Looks like we'll have to wait for Madden 2010.

Madden NFL 09 for Nintendo DS isn't a bad game; in fact, it's functionally stronger than last year, cleaning up a lot of the bugs and gameplay issues we mentioned in our 08 review almost exactly one year ago. In fact, as far as the core game is concerned EA has again delivered one of the best portable Madden games on a Nintendo console thus far, as you've got all the options and modes that made 08 great, and then some. It just fails to innovate once again, and after four years of the same core game, it's time to change some things for the better, rather than just fixing bugs and adding a new mode here and there. We've gone nearly half a decade with DS Madden, and it's high time some serious effort was put back into the innovation of the system.