Madden NFL Football

So EA didn't totally drop the ball; this offering just doesn't live up to the high standards we've come to expect from the Madden name. [April 2011, p.77]

In an era where millions of football fans obsess over stats, build fantasy teams, and even tune in to watch NFL combine drills, I'm not sure what audience EA is targeting by stripping Madden of its core multiplayer and franchise mode features. Nintendo handhelds may not always attract hardcore gamers, but that doesn't mean football fans who own the devices don't want a fully featured game.

Madden NFL Football isn't a bad game; it's just empty. The content that's there is polished, but there just isn't a lot of it.

The lack of features, especially multi-player, really hurts the game.

I'm not saying Madden's first outing on the spanking new 3DS platform doesn't deserve any attention but for a first shot, it's certainly a disappointment. Rushed? It sure has all symptoms.

Feels like an over-long demo, and its $40 price tag is a hard thing to swallow for the amount of features that are present in the game.

It's a bare minimum situation that will disappoint even the most desperate player. We have to go back a long way to remember a Madden game that offered so little.

Everything about Madden 3DS is curious, from its timing (released well after the end of the NFL season) to its design (no multiplayer, no franchise) to its price ($40 when it should be half that). Our cynical side thinks it's an attempt to cash in on the excitement of a new handheld device, while our naïve side prefers to think of it as an honest attempt at meeting a deadline and having to prioritize.

The core gameplay is fundamentally solid and filled with potential, but it seems like the developers gave up at halftime instead of pushing through to the end. The end result is a featureless title that feels like a demo of things to come instead of a full $40 retail release, and the lack of multiplayer is a glaring oversight.