Kodos
07-21-2003, 01:09 PM
Preview of Create-a-team from IGN. (http://ps2.ign.com/articles/429/429509p1.html)
I hope IGN is right about being able to edit uniforms to include old NFL logos. If so, here come the Atlanta Falcons in their shiny new Arthur Blank Stadium wearing the red unis of old!
Emmitt Smith is the man. He's the all-time leading rusher in NFL History. He's won Super Bowls, the MVP, he even has his own credit card commercial. The man deserves better than the Arizona Cardinals.
Luckily for all of you Cardinals-haters out there, in Madden NFL 2004 you can not only create new teams from scratch and place them in the NFL, you can also erase the dismal histories of teams like the Cardinals by replacing them in the league with your new squad. Bye-bye Arizona Cardinals, hello Brisbane Bandits.
Yes, you heard it correct, the Brisbane Bandits. But before you laugh, let me tell you this: Through the fantasy draft the Bandits now have Marshall Faulk, Hines Ward, Jeremy Shockey, Daunte Culpepper, David Boston, and Torry Holt and are headed to the Super Bowl in their first year. The Cardinals? Like I said, they've been completely eliminated from the league and the only thing left are distant replays of Neil Lomax running through my mind.
Enough with the Cardinals, though, let's get back to the Bandits. Anyone familiar with the Create-A-School function of EA's NCAA Football series will feel right at home with Madden's Create-A-Team function. You begin by selecting the primary and secondary colors of your new team, then you can select the team logo from 113 generic logos like the Yeti, Wasp, and Wrecking Ball, or you can select a letter from the alphabet, bite a logo from one of the current NFL teams. Or, best of all, you can bring back some of the coolest logos from the NFL's past like the classic Bucs with the orange pirate or the old school Houston Oilers oil rig. Once your colors and logo are selected, you can name your team whatever you want, provide an abbreviation, then select the appropriate city and state. Last, but definitely not least, you can choose the type of team you want complete with, from a ringer squad of All-Madden type players to a group of Smashmouth ballers.
Once the name game is through, you move on to actually designing your stadium. That's right, you can design just about every aspect of your new building, from tunnel placement to scoreboards to how many lights you want placed across the roof. You also have the option to select field type (natural grass, grassy turf, artificial turf, or baseball), endzone art, and even the name of your stadium (if only you could sell the naming rights to one of your friends for a few million).
When you move on to the uniform editor, you can select your home, away, home (alternate), and away (alternate) colors and look, including stripes and facemask color. From jersey type to pants to even the color of your shoes, you can pretty much make your team's uniforms look however realistic or unrealistic you want.
And then it's time to play the games. If you want to enter your team in Franchise mode, the first thing you need to do is, you guessed it, remove a team from the league so you can replace it in its division. So if you've always thought the Bengals couldn't beat your high school squad or find yourself disgusted by year after year of losing records from the lowly Cardinals, this is your chance to play commissioner and boot them out of the league for good…or at least until you start your next franchise.
The only bad thing about creating your own team is the fact that if you enter them in Franchise mode, you cannot utilize the new ownership function at the same time. If you want to play owner, you have to buy one of the real NFL teams, and then you can move them to Puerto Rico, set the price of popcorn and parking, change their uniform colors, do whatever you want, really. But we'll have more on Owner mode in another story, for now we're talking about the Brisbane Bandits and Create-A-Team, and as previously stated, you can't utilize both features simultaneously.
After you've successfully entered your new team in the NFL, the next thing on your agenda is to do a fantasy draft and start the entire league from scratch. You don't have to do this, as you can start with a group of fantasy players with names like Jimmy Rice and Rob McAllister ala NCAA Football 2004 that fit the playing style you initially selected for your team, but since this is the NFL and I actually like the fact that I can use real players, I prefer to take part in the draft. Besides, how else would I have Culpepper passing to Ward or handing off to Faulk (and I'm not talking no fantasy Bobby Faulk, neither)? Not on any team I know, except, of course, the Brisbane Bandits.
Once you're through with the draft, the offseason begins and Franchise mode runs pretty much like it has in years past. The one nice improvement is that now the offseason and preseason actually mean something as you can improve your players' attribute points through completing the various mini-game drills in training camp. The more points you score in the drill, the more attribute points you're given. This definitely comes in handy when you're trying to transform a player like Dre' Bly into someone more like Deion Sanders.
Oh yeah, in case you were wondering, I picked up Emmitt in week five and used him as my third down back. He just didn't look right in that red and white. Besides, the Super Bowl is up next for the Bandits and I figured I could use his experience.
If only Emmitt could be so lucky in real life.
-- Jon Robinson
I hope IGN is right about being able to edit uniforms to include old NFL logos. If so, here come the Atlanta Falcons in their shiny new Arthur Blank Stadium wearing the red unis of old!
Emmitt Smith is the man. He's the all-time leading rusher in NFL History. He's won Super Bowls, the MVP, he even has his own credit card commercial. The man deserves better than the Arizona Cardinals.
Luckily for all of you Cardinals-haters out there, in Madden NFL 2004 you can not only create new teams from scratch and place them in the NFL, you can also erase the dismal histories of teams like the Cardinals by replacing them in the league with your new squad. Bye-bye Arizona Cardinals, hello Brisbane Bandits.
Yes, you heard it correct, the Brisbane Bandits. But before you laugh, let me tell you this: Through the fantasy draft the Bandits now have Marshall Faulk, Hines Ward, Jeremy Shockey, Daunte Culpepper, David Boston, and Torry Holt and are headed to the Super Bowl in their first year. The Cardinals? Like I said, they've been completely eliminated from the league and the only thing left are distant replays of Neil Lomax running through my mind.
Enough with the Cardinals, though, let's get back to the Bandits. Anyone familiar with the Create-A-School function of EA's NCAA Football series will feel right at home with Madden's Create-A-Team function. You begin by selecting the primary and secondary colors of your new team, then you can select the team logo from 113 generic logos like the Yeti, Wasp, and Wrecking Ball, or you can select a letter from the alphabet, bite a logo from one of the current NFL teams. Or, best of all, you can bring back some of the coolest logos from the NFL's past like the classic Bucs with the orange pirate or the old school Houston Oilers oil rig. Once your colors and logo are selected, you can name your team whatever you want, provide an abbreviation, then select the appropriate city and state. Last, but definitely not least, you can choose the type of team you want complete with, from a ringer squad of All-Madden type players to a group of Smashmouth ballers.
Once the name game is through, you move on to actually designing your stadium. That's right, you can design just about every aspect of your new building, from tunnel placement to scoreboards to how many lights you want placed across the roof. You also have the option to select field type (natural grass, grassy turf, artificial turf, or baseball), endzone art, and even the name of your stadium (if only you could sell the naming rights to one of your friends for a few million).
When you move on to the uniform editor, you can select your home, away, home (alternate), and away (alternate) colors and look, including stripes and facemask color. From jersey type to pants to even the color of your shoes, you can pretty much make your team's uniforms look however realistic or unrealistic you want.
And then it's time to play the games. If you want to enter your team in Franchise mode, the first thing you need to do is, you guessed it, remove a team from the league so you can replace it in its division. So if you've always thought the Bengals couldn't beat your high school squad or find yourself disgusted by year after year of losing records from the lowly Cardinals, this is your chance to play commissioner and boot them out of the league for good…or at least until you start your next franchise.
The only bad thing about creating your own team is the fact that if you enter them in Franchise mode, you cannot utilize the new ownership function at the same time. If you want to play owner, you have to buy one of the real NFL teams, and then you can move them to Puerto Rico, set the price of popcorn and parking, change their uniform colors, do whatever you want, really. But we'll have more on Owner mode in another story, for now we're talking about the Brisbane Bandits and Create-A-Team, and as previously stated, you can't utilize both features simultaneously.
After you've successfully entered your new team in the NFL, the next thing on your agenda is to do a fantasy draft and start the entire league from scratch. You don't have to do this, as you can start with a group of fantasy players with names like Jimmy Rice and Rob McAllister ala NCAA Football 2004 that fit the playing style you initially selected for your team, but since this is the NFL and I actually like the fact that I can use real players, I prefer to take part in the draft. Besides, how else would I have Culpepper passing to Ward or handing off to Faulk (and I'm not talking no fantasy Bobby Faulk, neither)? Not on any team I know, except, of course, the Brisbane Bandits.
Once you're through with the draft, the offseason begins and Franchise mode runs pretty much like it has in years past. The one nice improvement is that now the offseason and preseason actually mean something as you can improve your players' attribute points through completing the various mini-game drills in training camp. The more points you score in the drill, the more attribute points you're given. This definitely comes in handy when you're trying to transform a player like Dre' Bly into someone more like Deion Sanders.
Oh yeah, in case you were wondering, I picked up Emmitt in week five and used him as my third down back. He just didn't look right in that red and white. Besides, the Super Bowl is up next for the Bandits and I figured I could use his experience.
If only Emmitt could be so lucky in real life.
-- Jon Robinson