EA Sports - Madden 2005
Features
- Take on players across the room with new head-to-head wireless action.
- Use new Touch Screen Control to select plays, call audibles, and more.
- Controlthe action on the upper screen, while keeping tabs on all 22 players with the Field Radar on the lower screen.
- Features the best 3D graphics available on a handheld, with detailed uniforms and player portraits.
Sites
All Madden
Madden 2005
NFL 2005 game for the Nintendo DS gives players new ways to control the action during gameplay. Gamers can now use the Nintendo DS touch screen to call plays, utilize the kick meter and select audibles at the line of scrimmage. The second screen also is home to Field Radar, which allows gamers to see where all 22 players are on the field while staying in the heart of the action on the other screen. NFL 2005 breaks new ground by allowing players to go head-to-head via wireless play. The game delivers polygonal 3D graphics while featuring authentic uniforms for all 32 NFL teams and player portraits for each NFL player. With a full season mode and fun game modes such as Situation Mode and 2-Minute Drill, NFL 2005 for the Nintendo DS delivers its signature level of depth in the palm of your hand.
A Review
- There's one constant I've noticed in my professional half-decade tenure exclusively covering the handheld market: sports games do not sell on portable systems. Every year a publisher comes out with a great sports game, only to have it sit on shelves to be passed up by gamers in favor of the umpteen Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon titles that thrive on the platform. Hockey, baseball, tennis...these are all one-shot deals on the portable system, rarely followed up with a next year's version to capitalize on the success the title may have had in retail. That is, except football. Good ol' American football has sustained a healthy life on the portables in the form of EA Sports' NFL series, and it's a rare sight indeed to experience a sports game as a launch title for a handheld platform. The Nintendo DS rendition of NFL 2005 offers up some nifty ideas for the unique system capabilities, but in the end the game is a lacking rendition of the series that's not much more than "good enough." It was obviously made in the familiar quick development cycle, but at least it's hopefully a tease for a true version coming to the system in time for the 2006 season.
- As powerful as the Nintendo DS hardware is, it's not quite current generation console technology. The graphic engine created for the Nintendo DS version of places it somewhere between the PlayStation One and the Nintendo 64 versions. It offers a 3D environment with fully polygonal players, but the athletes are extremely basic geometry and move with a robotic stiffness when compared to the fluid motion of the console's motion capturing. The overall presentation lacks the standard glitz and glamour of the console version. Menu screens are blandly designed and laid out, and player photo portraits are horribly aliased with white pixels, looking like they're transparent GIFs ripped off some fan's website. And, like the Game Boy Advance versions of the past, the sound is extremely minor on the Nintendo DS, only offering Al Michaels basic play-by-play and only about one or two different -isms from the big guy himself.
- But what this game brings to the table is a few neat dual-screen elements that open up the gameplay, and is a great start for when EA and The secondary screen is used for quick play calling thanks to the touch-sensitive panel. So, instead of navigating using the D-pad, players simply tap the play with their finger. Of course, the option to use the D-pad is there, and for some confusing reason this is the only way to select plays in the game's Wireless multiplayer. The secondary screen is also used as a handy overview of the action via old-school X and Os sliding over a top-down field, giving a feeling of the old trackball Atari Football arcade game. Players, if they want, can even use this screen to tap to the appropriate receiver, though this is more gimmicky than it is helpful. The touchscreen also helps to call time-outs without hopping to a menu, or pull up audibles without the need to memorize them. It also comes in useful when manipulating the camera during instant replays, giving players a neat TV editor control during the footage.
- And even with the "rushed" look and feel, it plays pretty mean football. It's not going to set the world alight with a flashy football presentation, but at least gamers can depend on a good, solid game on the gridiron. Occasional glitches and money plays still occasionally stick out, but name a game, console or handheld, past or present, that hasn't had a few of these left over in development. They're more noticeable on the DS since the entire package feels "rushed," but on the whole this version is probably the best playing portable pigskin yet created. It also offers individual player stat tracking, which indicates that EA finally sprung for a larger amount of SRAM for first round of DS software. The Cards are here for Nintendo DS gamers to collect, but it's more of a checklist to complete than it is a gallery to unlock.
Closing Comment
- Don't expect to be floored by 's first year on the Nintendo DS. It's yet another launch title that obviously didn't have a whole lot of time dedicated to its development cycle, so it was clearly kept feature-minimum in order to make the ship date. But even with this in mind, the overall package didn't turn out too badly, and even without a sense of spit and polish to the presentation, it's at least a solid playing game of football that offers way more in gameplay than what the Game Boy Advance is capable of pulling off.
