How Does ESPN NFL 2K5 Compare To The “Other” Football Video Game?

On OperationSports and MaddenMania there was a “March Madness” type bracket made up of 64 sports video games which were voted by members as the best sports video games of all time. This tournament yielded ESPN NFL2K5 the winner with a majority of votes. The past years, it has been common knowledge that this game was a great accomplishment in football gaming when released, and some say it has yet to be surpassed by the newer versions of certain football games.

Well, I am here to put that claim of superiority to the test. With Madden 09 coming in the next couple months and looking very promising, why not put ESPN NFL 2K5 up against last years version of Madden and see how they stack up?

In the next couple of weeks I will be comparing the following aspects of each game in-depth: Features, Gameplay/Control, Graphics, and Presentation/Sound.

ESPN NFL 2K5 and Madden 08 are be pretty close in this category seeing as how they are both supposed to be accurate representations of the sport of football. However, there are a few differences when it comes to features and gameplay modes.

ESPN NFL 2K5

• V.I.P – 2K sports had introduced this with all of its sports games and it was a very useful feature. What V.I.P. did was tracked everything that the user did and would help replicate that user if the profile was set to the A.I. In fact, one could even DOWNLOAD other players profiles and play against them. How freakin’ sweet!
• Franchise – The franchise mode was very well done and making use of the aforementioned V.I.P. profile helped broaden the experience. There was a weekly preparation feature which was innovative at its time and it was a blast to play through plenty of seasons. Also, not to mention there weren’t any “game killing” bugs to prevent franchises from being un-playable at all.
• First Person Football – Very innovative idea that took some getting used to. It was not used by many, but it was still very neat to play once in a while.
• ESPN 25th Anniversary – A mode where you could play 25 historical games from over the years and try to meet goals that could change or replicate history. I personally loved this mode, because I am a huge fan of classic moments such as The Catch.
• Practice Mode – Self-explanatory.
• Situation – You can put yourself in any situation that you wanted to play which was pretty neat as well.
• The Crib – This kind of went along with the V.I.P. profile as it kept track of your records. The crib was a “trophy room” that the other 2K games also had in their games in some way or form.

• Franchise – Same franchise one would come to expect from a Madden game except the fact that it had a huge bug that made it unplayable until a patch came out to fix it. The free agent bug was a pretty big bug which turned a lot of people off from the start and was very disappointing to everyone. Owner mode did make a return to the new generation of systems though, even if it was pretty much the same as its previous versions.
• Weapons – New to the series was a system which tried to help separate key players from the regular crowd. This system gave people different attributes at certain times and did help make players stand out. While it did have its fair share of problems, it worked fairly well for its first year in the game.
• Superstar Mode – Still relatively the same as the previous year, but still a really neat feature. Being able to create a star from scratch and control only his destiny through position specific camera angles and goals that needed to be reached.
• Practice – Self – explanatory.
• Trophies and Rings – These were various ways that Madden kept track of user stats and records. As you would play longer and accomplish feats, your “ring” would grow with diamonds and advance levels. The trophies replicated accomplishments as well and you could even wager them online against people.

The Edge: ESPN NFL 2K5. Very unique set of features and a working franchise sets it apart from Madden.

Next week I will check back in with a comparison on the way each game controls, and how the game plays!