Well... Its football I guess.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Decent graphics, its football on Xbox 360.

Cons: Graphic glitches, absence of modes found on other consoles.

The Bottom Line: 
If you can find this game cheaply, and you need your football fix, get it, otherwise stay away.

Author's Review
I have never been a fan of sports, and football in particular, I got this game cheaply and I figured that I might as well try it out, because I try to play all games and not form an opinion(e-pinion heh) before I play them.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game are pretty good, I have seen better on the Xbox 360 though. I guess since this game was one of the first titles for the 360 it wouldn't look as good as the later games. There are many small graphical glitches, at least on my copy of the game. When the camera is moving around showing the football stadium and the players it will jerk around a bit. Not only that but you do not have very much time to look at anything so you cannot tell if the graphics are very good or not. There is also some lag between plays, but I usually skip all of the in game movies, and I bet you will to. It is interesting the first 20 times but after that it just becomes an annoyance.

Sound:
All the sounds of football are here, the *clack* of people hitting each other, the cheering of the crowd, the referee, etc. There is music in the game, but it is not original music, it is licensed music from what they call "hot artists". I can honestly say I hated most of the music in this game, but your opinions may differ.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is very simple for anyone to pick up and play. If you play the game alot you will become better at it, but its simple. When you are on offense you chose a play and then you execute that play. Its that simple. After you chose a play you can press one of the buttons to pass to one of the players that you selected to pass to in that play. I know that sounds strange, but I can't really describe it better. Chances are if you are thinking of picking up this game you already know how football games work though.

One thing I liked about the play selection menu was how everything was organized into play types making it easy to find the play you want.

Online/Multiplayer:
You can play this game online over the Xbox Live gaming service, but you will have a very hard time finding people to play against. You have even a harder time trying to find people of your skill level (the game allows you to search for games by skill level).

Other:
Madden 06 is famous now because some of the modes that are available in the other versions of the game are not available on the Xbox 360 version of the game. This was not a big deal to me, I don't even know what those modes are, except I know practice is one of the modes. But if that IS a big deal to you you should research the other versions of the game