Call me crazy, but I’m going to associate the EA Madden NFL 09 football game with Britney Spears; “oops, I did it again” is the thought behind this year Madden’s sound developers.

Yes, there is sound. However, what I am not sure of is if EA has just used a bunch of previous recordings just as they have in previous years. I honestly don’t think that John Madden said one original line in all the game that I’ve played. The music, as much as I’m sure that it is original to this game, the sound is the same old sound that EA Sports has used throughout most of their sporting titles. If you want background noise just go ahead and keep it on, if not you can always turn the music off. Now, I don’t know if it was just dumb luck or an actual improvement, but the Madden commentary does not seem as dumb as previous Madden releases. For example, in last year’s release, the opposing team rushing effort was around negative twenty yards. After a 7 yard run gain, Madden commented that with running like that my team was in for a serious struggle. Not only was my opponent in the negative, but I was also up three touchdowns with less then a quarter to go. Commentary like that was just embarrassing. In this year’s game, while John says the same old stuff, he seems a bit smarter about the way he says them.

As for the graphics, they give us about what one would expect from a PSP but nothing more.

First of all, we have to consider the fact that in the NFL there are eleven players lined up on either side of the ball. The field is also pretty big. The new default Madden camera view shows us most of the action, but the camera is so far back that the players look almost like stick figures, and the ball looks like a pencil dot in motion. Luckily, the game includes several camera options, so finding the one right for you should not be a problem.

While the camera can be zoomed in closer on the players, the question at hand is do you really want to do that? While the stick figures are expected to look off, the close-ups of the players should look a lot better compared to what they actually look like. Personally, I think that the graphics in NCAA Football were better in regard to the players, but Madden does everything else better. The stadiums, even though the fans in the stands are still square-ish blobs for the most part look much better than NCAA’s stadiums, and while the new Madden interface and play calling might take a couple of games to adjust to, overall, I think that this year’s Madden pulled it off. Overall, while the graphics will not get the PSP’s version of Madden NFL 09 any awards, it is a decent looking game. Most importantly, unlike the other football game released this year (NCAA Football 09), this Madden release does not have that horrible looking tracer attached to the football.