Reviews

Madden NFL 2000

By Corey

EA Sports has brought tons of Madden games to a lot of consoles over the years. Most of them have been a success too. With only 1 other Football sim on the N64 in the 1999-2000 season, this one would be too, right?

Graphics: 6

I'll start with the good points first. The game move very smoothly with no problems what so ever. This makes the game easily playable. There are some pretty good wrap tackles. Now for the bad. The main thing is the players look blocky and fat. Their chests are mainly a slightly curved square. The fans in the seats are little colored dots. There are very few people on the sidelines. You'll be able to live with all of those minor graphical problems, but I really think I liked the Madden '96's (which was on the SNES) graphics better than this.

Gameplay: 7

I'll start with offence. The running game is pretty balanced for humans and the computer. Sometimes you'll get big gains and sometimes you'll get short ones. There isn't one play you can do everytime for 50 yard runs. Passing, I found it hard to stop the computer on all difficulties. This may be because I suck, but the Quarterback always has time to throw and someone is always wide open. If you're the one passing, there are a few plays you'll always get 10-15 yards on, which really shouldn't happen. The QB will almost always have all day to throw, but receivers hardly ever get open, at least for me. A realistic thing here is that if your QB is on the run, is throws will be more inaccurate than if he just stood in the pocket.

On defense, it wasn't really hard to stop the run because you could easily guess where the play is going most of the time. If you do guess wrong though, 5-10 yard gains will surely happen, just like in real games. Defending the pass was hard because the rush never would get to the QB and blitzes never worked. Their receivers would get open, while the computer would always have mine covered (except for those select few plays). Overall, the game has a lot of good gameplay points but some frustrating ones too.

There are other options too, like Madden Challenge. Here you try to break a preset record the game has, like "longest rushing play". Breaking these gets you various cheats that are mainly useless to gameplay. These are fun to try to break when you got nothing else to do.

Sound: 5

The crowd never shuts up for any reason, and it's always that same crowd noise that I really can't explain. Every so often they'll get louder or quieter, but never do anything else. The commentary is awful, with Pat Summeral doing the boring analysis and John Madden throwing the same obvious comments at you once in a while. I never like Football commentary though.

Lasting Value: 6

If you like Football games and like this, you'll come back to play it. If not, you'll hardly play the game. I didn't find the game all that great so I hardly play it.

Bottom Line

Easily the best football sim for the 1999-2000 season on the N64, but not really that good either. If you are a fan of all the past Madden games or are a huge football fanatic you should still like this, but there are better football games on other systems. *cough*NFL2K on Dreamcast*cough*

Final Score: 6 out of 10