Madden NFL 08: Superstar Mode - Part 4

At the end of a season, players are selected to the Pro Bowl. If you have played exceptionally well throughout the season you might be selected to go to Hawaii and play in an All-Star game. Each season also features a voting for several prizes such as Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year. These honors and awards may increase your chance of going to the Hall of Fame once you retire. If you’ve had a really great year you might be selected to be the cover athlete of the Madden NFL game.

Once a season is over your agent will be signing you up for endorsements and sponsorships. If you get enough money from your promotional work as well as your base salary from your team you might move away from your small studio apartment to a bigger downtown loft. Once you’ve become a superstar and a millionaire you move into a mansion. This feature is terrific and so well done by EA Sports. Since your player never actually gets to spend any of their salary on anything, as you can’t buy anything it is really great to see them change your apartment out with something more expensive. And it feels great to move from your small apartment to a beautiful loft after a long season of hard work. Unfortunately this is a feature they have later removed, which is a real shame because it made you feel like you were actually living the life of a NFL athlete trying to get by.

Eventually your contract with your team will expire and you have a choice to sign an extension or become a free agent where any team can offer you a contract. You get a list of interested teams along with their offer of money and length of contract. While playing under a contract for a team you can demand a trade, although this will affect your ego negatively and you won’t have choice of where you are being traded off.

The Madden Superstar mode has so many great things going for it, specifically the feeling of being an actual player in the NFL. Unfortunately the game play becomes redundant; especially the practices and you never feel like you’re actually improving. Madden has fixed this in later installments but in Madden 08 you have to wait until your player is actually on the field which is very irritating. While the idea of having the camera angle focused only on what your player can see it just doesn’t fully work. The angle is often awkward and is too different from the rest of the game play. Superstar Mode has often been a mode that could be a great success but hasn’t found it’s stride yet. It’s a shame that EA Sports decided to remove the one great thing that Madden 08 had going in later installments, as I’m certain that they should have been able to figure it out by now.