Madden 08 [PC] is still ALIVE and well

After all the work I did on rosters for Madden 12 and the hours upon hours of research trying to get Madden 12 to play more realistic (I probably put in well over 200 or more hours on rosters for Madden 12/13 and research/tweaking Madden 12 all the way up to last February), I finally just got to a point where I had to just give up. No amount of tinkering is ever going to fix "next gen" Madden (as in Last Gen, which PS3/360 now are known, but of course everyone years back was always talking about how everything went wrong on PS3/360 when they were the new "Next Gen" platforms).

Pockets are crap on PS3, everything is animation based, tinkering with one thing just ends up breaking two others, penalties are utterly broken. It got to a point where I became so fed up with Madden 12 (and considering 13 & 25 were widely considered worse than 12, those weren't even an option) that I walked away from football video games for the better part of a year (my previous longest drought was a mere summer when I was working on a project 5+ hours from home and living out of a suitcase). That is until this Fall, when I finally decided that if I was going to play Old, Old Gen Madden I might as well try it out Madden 08 on PC. Needless to say, I'm probably staying here until 2K or someone else releases a Triple A football title. And I'm ok with that.

First thing that I had to get over was the graphics, but my goodness, their not even bad on PC. 1080p at 60 frames per second makes for a great game of simulation football, but of course at very low texture resolutions and with very dated 3D models. But the truth of the matter the game runs great and plays smooth. All edges are crisp, and controls (360 controller via MS Windows drivers) feel more responsive than a console.

Another thing I had to forgo was all those useless specialized player ratings that really didn't do anything in-game. Ahem, CIT, HTP, FMV, ZMC, PBF, etc. I was bummed when I noticed those were missing. After playing with ratings and actual gameplay, I'm glad they're gone.

Rosters and Player Ratings aren't a problem at all. Check out footballidiot .com and you'll find an active community over there that stay on top of updates regularly.

Surely uniforms and logos would be a major issue right? Nope, Football Idiot / Football Freaks XIV Madden Mod has you covered. Seahawks, Dolphins, Bucs, Jags, etc all have fantastic looking Modded uniforms, helmets, and logos.

Player photos must be an issue, just about everyone from 2007 is retired by now right? Wrong. Almost all players have current photos, even more player photos than Madden 15.

Coaches are off too right? Wrong again. Thanks to the community over at footballidiot they're all current.

Ok so what makes the game stand out? CUSTOM PLAYBOOKS! Thanks to Mod tools you can fit dozens of formations, and literally over 1000+ completely custom plays into a modded custom playbook.

Here is a bit of gameplay I uploaded to the YouTubes.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ou2clMSRmOc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If you've been longing for a decent game of American Football and have felt left out since 2005 or 2006, maybe you should look around the net and see if what you find piques your interest.