Madden NFL 2001

The Good
Graphically this game is clean and well executed. Fine details such as eye movement, glove adjusting, and leg stretching add that fine touch that make you feel like you are watching Monday Night Football. When you really goof up you get a nice cut scene of your coach shouting or slumping in disappointment. Picking plays is great once you get past the learning curve on locating the plays in your play book. Since you can also choose other play books for your team, this can get confusing. Players have great physics where if your player is running high speed and you want to turn him around it takes a little time for him to stop and then shift his momentum in the new direction. Some people miss crisp movement execution but I found this feature excellent for gameplay.

The Bad
There are a couple of things that could be improved in this game. I am not a programmer but I still see players walking through referee's and other players as well as body parts going through objects. My major gripe with this game is the difficulty that I had trying to save and restore games. The interface is too cluttered with multiple files to save. When trying to continue a season, it does not appear to work in the way that the documentation or the help system denote. Numerous times I ended up simulating the entire game week including the game that I wanted to play! This then caused be to cancel all of the changes and reload by save to try it again. Very counter productive.

The Bottom Line
If you want to play some football that is lovingly detailed, check out Madden!