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Madden NFL '99 (PlayStation, 1998)

Long-time fans of the Madden series have always known and loved Madden football for its in-depth, true-to-life football action, as well as good graphics and control. Last year's Madden, however, lagged behind GameDay, resulting in a pretty lackluster game. This year the team at Tiburon has put as much time and effort into the graphics engine as it has into the AI and gameplay. The result is a beautiful football game that is undoubtedly the most gorgeous football game on the PlayStation today. The 3D polygonal players look incredibly detailed and move with smooth realistic motion. New animations, like receivers tracking the ball with their head, really give the players a life of their own. The AI of the computer-controlled players has dramatically improved over last year's Madden. When the computer is on defense, the way that it covers the play is very natural, and in turn, more realistic. Cornerbacks no longer look like they are simply running preset paths next to your receiver, but instead act as though they are aware of not only the man they are covering but the other receivers as well. This is demonstrated when you perform a pump-fake or a fake handoff, and the defense falls for it. The AI will recognize your patterns fairly quickly, though, and won't let you get away with too much. The sound and music of Madden NFL 99 are nearly flawless. Pat Summerall calls the play-by-play action, and John Madden is at his side offering his usual Maddenisms. The sound effects are all pretty good. Also new this year is the addition of franchise mode. You can take your team through several seasons, participate in the draft, and basically try to manage the entire team. It's a pretty cool mode, especially since you can simulate games and skip ahead to see stats of players and how they're doing. But with Madden 99's beefier stat tracking, the players on the field aren't the only ones who are rated; you are given a performance rating as the team's manager. This lets you know how well you've managed your team. The control feels typical of Madden football games, with one exception; the game has a new gameplay feature called one-button mode. This control setup allows for novice players to simply push one button to execute a wide variety of different moves. You push one button to hike the ball or throw the ball, and depending on a defender's distance, that one button will also execute a stiff-arm, hurdle, juke, or spin move. This one-button setup allows inexperienced players to jump in and begin playing immediately. Advanced players need not worry though; the new one-button feature is just an option, and you can still use all of the buttons to do anything you feel is necessary. In the end, when it comes down to it, Madden 99 is simply the best Madden game to date. While this is the first NFL football game to come out this season, it's safe to say that Madden 99 will be one of the best football games to ship this year.

Madden NFL 2001 (PlayStation, 2000)

Madden 2001 for the PlayStation 2 is the best iteration of the game we've ever seen. EA Sports has delivered just about everything a fan of the series could hope for, and while it focuses on technical and simulation elements a bit more than the other games on the market, the game stays true to the Madden name. The game has more features and options than any other Madden game before. It includes all of the fundamental options, like exhibition and season modes, and all of the in-depth options, like franchise, create-a-player, and Madden challenges. The Madden challenges have a bit more to them this year, since the completion of each one earns you tokens, which you can use like money in the game. You can purchase special items like cheats, secret players, and teams. You can even use the tokens, with the help of a couple of memory cards, as currency to wager with when challenging another player. The Madden challenge cards, which are displayed when you buy items, were made in conjunction with Upper Deck and look like really cool digital trading cards. They add a whole new incentive for playing the game and completing the Madden challenges. The control in Madden 2001 is pretty much just like any that of any other Madden game, although some will find the overall feel of the game a bit too slow and unresponsive. The game uses a momentum-based physics engine, which is supposed to make the gameplay all the more real. The only problem is that it plays a bit too real - players have to literally stop their momentum when making a change in the direction they're running, just like in real life. This, while physically correct, just doesn't translate into fast-paced, hard-hitting football action. Instead, it causes the reaction time of a controller command to be a tad too slow, leaving the game feeling a bit sluggish. In time, you do learn to accommodate for this, and the effect isn't nearly so bad. The AI of the game will surely to seem familiar to fans of the series, particularly those who've played this year's PlayStation version. The AI's easiest setting will let you get away with a lot and teaches you early on that the game is all about knowing your team's plays and your players' abilities. Knowing which players to go to will help you blow the doors off the computer on the lower skill settings, but once you start to move up, you'd better have more than just a few tricks up your sleeve. Visually, Madden 2001 on the PlayStation 2 is unsurpassed in its detail and polish. The game is almost perfect in its visual replication of the fields and players of the NFL. The textures used for the fields, jerseys, and skin of the players is incredible. Grass fields look just like real grass, which can actually get lodged in the corner of a player's facemask after he sinks his head into the soil after a missed dive tackle. During the game's replays, you can actually see the individual bumps of the pigskin on the football. All of these little visual details really make the game look and feel real. For instance, line judges will hastily drop the line markers and move out of the way when players run out of bounds in their direction. The animations of the players themselves are extremely fluid and realistic. The players move and perform stiff arms, catches, and tackles quite authentically. The multiple point collision detection system of the game allows the tackles in the game to look more realistic and be based more on individual situations than ever before.......

College Hoops 2K6

It's time for March Madness, but that usually means filling out brackets and sneaking out of the office to run to the nearest sports bar and catch a few tournament games during lunchtime. You usually don't associate this time of year with the release of college basketball video games, but 2K Sports went ahead and did it anyway, with the Xbox 360 version of College Hoops 2K6. With the game's late arrival, you would hope that a lot more than just some subtle tweaks would have been made to justify paying double the price of current-generation versions. While the same great artificial intelligence and gameplay from those versions remain in this one, there just isn't much new here to get excited about. The same control systems used in NBA 2K6 and previous versions of College Hoops 2K6 are used in this version too. First of all, there's the new isomotion juke system. Instead of using the right analog stick to execute fancy dribble maneuvers, you toggle the right and/or left trigger buttons to put your ball handler into an aggressive stance. Once you do that, jiggling the left analog stick will not only move your player, but it will also execute juke moves. If the ball's in your player's right hand, toggling the stick from right to left will execute a crossover. Do a half circle and he'll wrap the ball around his back instead. As you experiment with the isomotion, you'll find that you can easily chain together moves ranging from jab steps to crossovers to backspins and more. It's not an easy system to learn for sure, but once you get it down, you'll find that you have a lot of control over how your ball handler moves. The new shot stick is also included in College Hoops 2K6. The right analog stick is now used as another way to shoot the basketball, since it no longer controls the juke moves. The interesting thing about the shot stick is that it lets you emote different types of shots. Tap away from the basket from midrange and you can execute a fallaway jumper. Drive the hoop and tap to either side, and your shooter will try a one-handed scoop with either hand. Different types of dunks can also be executed depending on how you move the stick as you drive an open lane--the more-agile dunkers can do some spectacular throw-downs. The post game is also made more interesting by the shot stick, as you can execute different types of post moves, like spins, drop steps, fallaways, and up-and-unders with a combination of the shot stick and the aggressive modifier. For the faint of heart, the standard shot button still remains, which will allow the computer to select a shot for you as with any other basketball game. But for those of us who want the added control, the shot stick works pretty well once you get the hang of it. Other new tweaks to the gameplay have also been made, such as the intuitive pull-and-release free-throw mechanism. In this version of College Hoops 2K6, the camera does not zoom in close to the player. Instead, you get the same camera you picked for gameplay, which gives you a better view to rebound any misses. Perhaps more important is the inclusion of a flexible quick-menu system called the "coach's clipboard" that pops up at every play stoppage. This great feature lets you quickly make player substitutions, as well as other adjustments to your defense.