3rd and 10, ball on the 24 yard line.

Building on the success of the current generation Madden titles many thought that EA's move to the Xbox 360 would herald a new era of realism and fantastic features in their killer football game but sadly this has not been the case, with Madden 06 and 07 on the next generation falling far short of its goal.

I am happy to say then that Madden NFL 08 is the NFL game that we have all been waiting for since day one of the next generation. The improvements that EA have made are leaps and bounds over what many expected of the franchise that looked as if it was going stale.

When first booting Madden 08 you see instantly that a huge amount of time has been put into presentation. The menu screen is designed like a Hall of Fame with your showcase in the middle, showing off your trophies that you have won and your ring.

Your ring is an advancement of the Madden gamer level introduced in last year’s iteration of Madden. You advance ring stages by completing tasks in game such as throwing for 300 yards or rushing in two touchdowns. You can compare your ring level with that of a friend via Xbox Live and it is a good way to compare player skill.

When you do jump into a game you find the actual gameplay running smoothly and beautifully. This is largely thanks to the use of 60 frames-per-second that ’08 is running on. The game looks streamlined with no graphical glitches what-so-ever.

The player models have been downgraded a little from last year in regards to a player’s appearance. That’s not to say the faces don’t look like the player but the body models have been toned down, players look more realistic not like the superheros of 2007.

This year EA have introduced the player weapon system where each high caliber NFL player has a weapon that increases his skill in a certain area. The advantage of this is that you can set player mismatches on both sides of the ball and exploit these to your advantage which brings the tactical aspect of NFL back into play. For example if you have a spectacular catch receiver lined up on a generic cornerback and throw a high pass to him, he will leap in the air and make an amazing one handed catch from time to time like the real marquee players in the NFL do, it just adds to the realism and strategy.

Another thing that has been brought back from current gen Madden and refined for 2008 is the defensive individual audible. An audible is a call at the line of scrimmage that changes the play as a whole or an individual player’s play and was in large part missing in 2007. You could change the defense as a whole but not an individual player which was a bad move as sometimes the play was a great call expect for the blitzing linebacker that should have been in coverage which in the end resulted in a big play. In 2008, you can simply make that linebacker play pass coverage and turn the big play by the offence into one by your defense.

Franchise owner mode is also back. In 2007 you could take your team of choice and play them through 30 years of Franchise mode, build your team into an NFL dynasty and that was fantastic and has been a cornerstone of Madden for years, but the finer details of the mode were left out. Owner mode lets you keep an eye on your team’s finances, hire and fire coaching staff and relocate your team. It gives you that little bit extra control that goes a long way to making the game fun.

But there are some bad things to say about 08. In game there are too many turnovers. Sometimes you will have three or four fumbles and/or interceptions a game, which is a little unrealistic. Also, the NFL superstar mode where you make your own player and enter into the NFL as a rookie has not been improved much other than camera angles.

All in all Madden 08 is a giant improvement from 2006 and 2007 and is the next generation version of Madden that we have all been waiting for, but there is still room for improvement.

Ball is snapped, pressure coming, pass completed for a TOUCHDOWN EA SPORTS!!