ESPN NFL 2K5 vs Madden NFL 08 Part One

Feature Article

Submitted on: 06/05/2008 by Will Soistman

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.

Features

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.

Madden 08

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!

Member Comments

# 21 muggins @ 06/06/08 10:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StayPlation82


	give me a break people. madden is best, it sells more (outsold 2k5). if that game was so great, why didn't anyone buy the thing and the were giving them away at like 29.99. sad. presentation is like 10% of a game anyway and other than that the game had bad player models, cheap humor and bad physics. for some of you the game is great but to the other millions of fans that buy madden we say the game was just ok. R.I.P. 2k5...and people thought Elvis was great too. please! get out of here!

This has to be a fake post

# 22 onetonmartin @ 06/06/08 11:58 AM

Sadly, this will be close.

The NFL/EA license agreement screwed football gaming.

# 23 TrueKingPK @ 06/06/08 01:40 PM

I don't even understand why you guys are making this post. Madden is nowhere near the game NFL 2k5 was. The only advantage I would have given Madden was it had a better Create-A-Team Feature. Other than there isn't too much more I can see where Madden was better. This is a landslide victory.

# 24 Hammerhunker @ 06/06/08 01:48 PM

I am not sure if this will be mentioned later, but hey, the cheerleaders in 2k5 weren't too shab! The site of them kept me quite warm on those chilly autumn and winter months of 2004/2005.

Quite simple, this is a game being touted this many years later and being compared to the best (I guess, for lack of a better term) that the new gen has to offer. Not even a comparison, in reality really.

# 25 wwharton @ 06/06/08 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radja


	at the time, madden 05 for the old gen had the better franchise. however, the fact that madden 08 for the next gen hasnt improved on the madden old gen, means you have to give a huge nod to 2k5. ea has had several years and more powerful hardware to work with. as far as the 2k5 franchise bugs, the draft had features that were awesome. the combine was fun and the weekly wrapup were awesome. the 1st round glitch made for house rules to be used but it was workable. the trade glitch was fixed if you moved the injury slider up to 26 or so. the presentation killed 08. the ability to play any replay in the game was beyond its time. however, after seeing some videos, this is the first year (09) in a looooooong time, i believe madden may have presentation worth seeing.

But the comparison isn't between the 2k franchise and the madden franchise, it's between 2k5 and madden 08. It's unfair to compare anything besides the two games of focus. What I mean is, you can only say "Madden 08 doesn't do this well" or "2k5 does this better than Madden 08". It wouldn't be following the point of the article (isn't since this is what happened) to say "2k5 is better b/c Madden 08 hasn't improved on what previous versions of Madden did"... especially without mentioning the flaw that existed in the previous versions since not everyone may even know what it is.

As for presentation in franchise or single player, that wasn't included in this comparison (I assume it will be in later ones) so that can't really play into this either just yet.

# 26 Rocky @ 06/06/08 03:15 PM

I also remember Madden 2005's franchise mode with the radio guy and position battles. The tightest thing though was the fact that if you had a big trade or an big injury, every team newspaper(kind of like the SI's in NCAA) would report on it. You also had owner mode, an in depth draft, and alot of coaching movements.

In fact, I would say Madden 2005>>>NFL2K5>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Madden 2008 in terms of franchise/features.

Competition was a beautiful thing.

# 27 StayPlation82 @ 06/06/08 03:25 PM

Flames!!!! big ol Flames!!! lol, ya'll are sad. let her go man. she was hot in high school when you didn't know any better. when you go back and look at the year book photo, you're like yeah she's hot but when you compare her to the new hotness walking the streets today, she don't cut it! i know ya'll had a one year relationship and you got to hit anytime you wanted, but now its kind of sad, now you're comparing every girl you meet to her, no one can top your baby or no one has yet. its pathetic. you start ya date off talking about her. ya try to give compliments but they go wrong like, "you look nice MaMa, but not as good as TwoTwo used to". get over it she ain't that hot and she for sure isn't that hot anymore, have you seen her lately? have you seen what she grew up to look like in '07? all i'm saying is....move on! let her go! unless ya married her, whoa! then that's a whole other situmuation(sit-u-mu-at-ion). and they thought Vanilla Ice was great too! please! get out of here! WTF!

P.S.
oh and everything about the NFL is exclusive from the sunday ticket all the way down to merchandise i.e. Reebok. if i'm them i start looking to make sure my image is sound. so i cut out the Blitz of the world, so i look for a company doing football the way i think it should be, you guessed it, EA. and it doesn't help that they happen to have money. i like there money and there product, i go with them.

what i want all of the 2k fanatics to do: ya'll stop buying Madden until its better than ya 2k5, that'll show em! they'll miss all of 10,000 of you on the forums and shed a tear...

# 28 wwharton @ 06/06/08 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StayPlation82


	Flames!!!! big ol Flames!!! lol, ya'll are sad. let her go man. she was hot in high school when you didn't know any better. when you go back and look at the year book photo, you're like yeah she's hot but when you compare her to the new hotness walking the streets today, she don't cut it! i know ya'll had a one year relationship and you got to hit anytime you wanted, but now its kind of sad, now you're comparing every girl you meet to her, no one can top your baby or no one has yet. its pathetic. you start ya date off talking about her. ya try to give compliments but they go wrong like, "you look nice MaMa, but not as good as TwoTwo used to". get over it she ain't that hot and she for sure isn't that hot anymore, have you seen her lately? have you seen what she grew up to look like in '07? all i'm saying is....move on! let her go! unless ya married her, whoa! then that's a whole other situmuation(sit-u-mu-at-ion). and they thought Vanilla Ice was great too! please! get out of here! WTF! P.S. oh and everything about the NFL is exclusive from the sunday ticket all the way down to merchandise i.e. Reebok. if i'm them i start looking to make sure my image is sound. so i cut out the Blitz of the world, so i look for a company doing football the way i think it should be, you guessed it, EA. and it doesn't help that they happen to have money. i like there money and there product, i go with them. what i want all of the 2k fanatics to do: ya'll stop buying Madden until its better than ya 2k5, that'll show em! they'll miss all of 10,000 of you on the forums and shed a tear...

Outside of the fact that the responses here are to an article created, you just wrote a long paragraph trying to make a bad comparison to some high school girlfriend? And you want to call other people sad? Really? You may not have a clear grasp on what being sad really means.

# 29 adandar @ 06/07/08 09:00 AM

StayPlation82, the only part of your rant that actually made sense was the part about image control. The rest was rather lacking because if anything you may have created an argument against Madden.

Madden was great back in the 90s when the alternatives had zero marketing, zero ability in compete on gameplay because of Madden's structural head start and long standing relationship with the NFL. Of course, they might have also taken another route and would try to compete by catering to a niche market by being extreme (See NFL Blitz). That being said, like an old girlfriend who was hot in her day, she got older and didn't put in the work to stay hot.

Madden isn't that MILF that we all would aspire to know in your later years, but rather she grew fat and has facial hair from living in a bus 24/7 and hanging out at ACE Hardware. Get real bro... For you to think Madden has evolved to a higher state simply because it went next gen is naive and not extremely thoughtful.

I've played all the next gen games and NFL 2K5 on the 360. 2K5's game play, not presentation, is still the closest to what I see on Sundays, and the occasional Monday night. The presentation is also more realistic to what we would expect as fans of the NFL (See ESPN license that is put to actual use).

Fact of the matter is this... We crave a sim to be realistic. Madden's goofy features that it comes up with every year may be new and in some cases even novel, but few have brought it closer to realism (see poor salary cap management, game play controls such as using speed like an accellerator in a car, etc.), thus taking it more and more into the realm of the arcade. Thus, this is why the game has not truly improved over the last half decade.

Think what you may, but the 2K5 fanatics in here, which I would include myself a member, just want a game that brings us that much closer to the real thing.

If 2K5 was called another name or made by another company, I wouldn't care. If Backbreakers comes out and has the best game play to date, I would have to check that out.

However, because EA has the exclusive license, there will always be that twinge of what-if. What if Backbreakers had the real NFL teams or a franchise mode?

Therefore, until the NFL wakes up or someone acquires EA, which seems unlikely, we are stuck in this cycle and our only choice is ESPN NFL 2K5.

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