~John Madden Football

Reviewed By Neil Hopkins

A cautionary tale.

I was mooching in my local computer store the other day, feeling 
sorry for myself, and with fifteen quid burning a hole in my pocket. 
So I committed a terrible sin, and paid an equally terrible price 
(dramatic hyperbole). I bought a game on impulse.

Well, that's not entirely true. I had not seen the game reviewed in 
any magazine, but it had been out on budget for quite a long time 
and I don't read every computer magazine under the sun. I had played 
John Madden Football on a Sega Megadrive and a friends Amiga, 
and I'm sure that Dominic Diamond had said that he would buy each 
new release even if they only changed the colour of the players' 
shoelaces. It was published by Electronic Arts, who are reasonably 
reputable games publisher.  I also made the mistake of looking at 
the blurb on the box.

"93%. Best football game in its class"

Einstein once said that time is relative - so are computer game 
scores. Now a score of 93% might indicate that a game is a classic 
on the same level as Dune II, Doom or X-Wing. However no date is 
given for this review, which in my book is blatently misleading. 
What the 93% indicates is that the game was the best of those 
reviewed that month, and this is certainly not a game that has stood 
the test of time.

I am not one to judge a game solely on it's graphics or sound. 
However, the presentation of a game must be of sufficient quality to 
allow suspension of disbelief - to allow you to forget about the 
real world for a while, and imerse yourself in the fantasy of your 
choice, whether that is to chainsaw demons, pilot an X-Wing or coach 
a pro-football team. To compare the original sim-city with sim city 
2000 shows that the original, while lacking the graphical 
sophistication of it's sequel, still shows all of the information 
needed to manage the game scenario in sufficient detail. 

A complex game like American Football requires an extraordinary 
amount of statistical and real-time information to be presented in a 
comprehensive and comprehensible manner. JMF fails on several counts
. Firstly, the player graphics are simply too small and lacking in 
detail. It is simply not possible to acurately see who is in 
possession of the ball, who is tackling, and what the eligible 
receivers are doing. Players lack identifying numbers on their 
jerseys, and the switch from close up to passing view just does not 
work effectively for passing plays. EGA graphics do not have to be 
this bad. Elite, FS3 and other classic PC games of this era manage 
to work effectively with CGA graphics and upwards. 

The play selection is a poorly designed text only screen  that does 
not show the route details and is awkward to use. The text font is 
blocky to the point of illegibility, and the mouse support is so 
poor as to be worse than using the keyboard.

Aural information is important to American football. The count, the 
snap, the line of scrimmage audibles, the sound of bruising tackles, 
the roar of the crowd and of course the post play commentary and 
analysis. JMF tries valiently to use the PC speaker and fails. The 
PC speaker, while not exactly brilliant, is better than nothing and 
has been used to good effect in some classic PC games. However, JMF 
uses an extremely limited number of scratchy samples over and over 
again, ad nauseum. It is simply not acceptable.

The underlying game engine is both good and comprehensive, as 
demonstrated by the subsequent games in the series. However the 
presentation and interface makes access to the engine practically 
impossible. To be blunt, I would prefer a text only, silent game 
with a user friendly interface to the game as it currently stands. 

The final nail in the coffin is the lack of real teams in the game - 
surely the main attraction of an American football game should be 
the chance to step into the shoes of a Madden, Lombardi or Shula 
with a real life team, complete with at least an approximation of 
the appropriate strip, not the just the reds and the blues.

Surely the game could have been given a remedial once over, to 
include VGA graphics and sound blaster support, and to bring the 
interface up to an acceptable CUA standard. 

I can not recommend this game to even the most ardent American 
football fan as it currently stands. I was fortunate in that the 
shop where I purchased it were kind enough to let me exchange it for 
a couple of shareware disks and a partial refund - an honourable 
mention to Just Micro of Carver Street in Sheffield.

With the benefit of hindsight, I would advise people to always ask 
to see a game running, on a PC of the same spec as your own, 
particularly when buying some of the more recent processor hungry 
SVGA games. If you can't do this then make sure that you will be 
able to return a game for a refund or exchange if it is not what you 
expect. Caveat, as they say, Emptor.      

I'm still looking for a good American football game - any 
suggestions ?


Yeah, try Unecessary Roughness '95 (A note from the Ed.)
