Anyone play Madden 09?

 

I have played EA's Madden NFL since the early 90's. I've seen its ups and downs. Sometimes the game is just a simple roster update with a few new features. The Madden 09 promises lots of new features and much more fluid animations. This game has a constant problem in previous versions and it still occurs in the 09 release.

Madden NFL players have been having problems of the game freezing up at different times of the game. There is nothing more annoying being in the middle of a game and have the game freeze up on you. You lose your concentration of the game.
EA should have found this problem before they released the game. It has happened with at least two versions of Madden NFL. One has to wonder if they are even testing these games pre-release. They even sold us on the new version by telling us that there were new features but those features are useless if the game just freezes while your trying to use them. Sometimes the game even freezes before you get to start the game. Yes, I have even had freezes in franchise mode. You can lose your franchise if you try to improve your prospects. Sometimes the freezing seems to get worse each time you reset the game other times it happens every 3 or 4 games. I've had freezes in Franchise Mode. It seems that when CPU teams try to add players before pre-season starts, I think they funds to fill their depth charts which causes the freeze. One freeze happened in-game when I was using the EA Sports Rewind feature. After a penalty in the fourth quarter. During Franchise Mode, it froze when I wanted to simulate either a pre-season or regular season. When I got to season three in the Franchise Mode, I could not play or simulate any pre-season game without the game freezing. A simple restart of the system would fix this freezing problem when I had it before, but I tried this method several times in season three and it doesn't work.

All the games I have played on the Xbox 360 except the EA Sports games have not frozen on me. It's very disappointing to see an otherwise excellent game be unplayable because of a problem that professional game developers should not allow to even reach the store shelves. The thing is the game looks great and is a lot of fun to play. It is one of my favorite games. It has been for a long time. A lot of us bought it for franchise play. I like the impressive improvements in player animations. There are several new animations like the bobble catch and the missed field goal return. Running, group tackling, blocking, and other animations are smoother and more authentic. The downloadable roster update also is a cool surprise in this game. The gold XBox Live account is needed to download, and there is manual updating the will be required if you want to be up to date with what's going on with the NFL depth charts. The soundtrack is great too and you're get to select whichever songs you want to hear. Madden Moments and the Online Dynasty are also cool new aspects of Madden 09 as well as Franchise and Superstar Mode. If you get the more expensive Special Edition you will have even more features to enjoy.

This is what happens after 20 years of developing a game? At around $60 a copy I would think that they will have made enough money to have someone test the game and fix the problems. Maybe this is happened because the NFL gave EA exclusive rights. The NFL is stupid to do this because we would buy more football video games from other makers and the NFL would get more money.

We would also get a choice to buy a game that doesn't freeze and ruin the whole game playing experience. We certainly don't have a choice of returning a flawed game after we have opened the box. You can send the disc to EA to get a replacement, but the replacement also contains the same flaw because it is something in the code of the game. EA needs to go over the game and figure out where their software is going wrong. This is not just happening with Madden 09. It also occurs in Nascar 09 and NCAA Football 09.

Well we are fighting back, and there are a lot of us. What do video game players do when they want to get the video game companies to listen to them? They start petitions. Not only did someone start a petition, but hundreds of people are signing the petition to get EA to fix the game.You can be part of the movement and tell EA to stop releasing games that don't work properly. Fill out the petition form and let your voice be heard. If enough of us communicate this to EA they may start to work on this problem. Sometimes companies will not listen to just one customer. They may make a refund or send a new copy of the game, but they won't take much interest in fixing the game. Even if they get hundreds of single returns or complaints they seem to take action.

Signing up on the petition will let EA know that we are all together in letting them know we are not happy with them releasing a game with such problems. They need to be told that they must spend more money, time and energy on testing their games before we shell over $60 or more to purchase a worthless product. Many people are seeing this as EA just stealing money from us.Do your part to help the gaming community fight back against dishonest companies who promise us good working games and then don't deliver.

Go to http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/Madden09 and sign the Madden 09 petition. Let your voice be heard.
Please, just take a moment and sign the petition!