20 years of existence is a long time for any videogame series, let alone one that sees a new release each and every one of those 20 years. I of course refer to the Madden NFL series from EASports, which has seen various ups and downs in its lengthy existence, ranging from troubling times in heated battle with competing NFL games, to what we have today in the 'exclusive rights' era of sports gaming. This NFL exclusivity that EA acquired for their flagship sporting title has brought upon mixed results for the NFL gaming enthusiasts. On one hand, EA are given access to material otherwise not available with their now very close relationship to the NFL, but on the other hand, the overriding theme has been lackluster efforts since Madden became the only NFL game out there and made its way first to the Xbox 360 and then the PS3, arguably caused by the absence of any competition for EA. The series has really not been where it could and should have been since the new engine came about, seemingly unable to shake its rushed 360 launch title shackles.

This was a troubling reality for the NFL gaming faithful - after all, with no competition to speak of and a huge casual gamer following that almost assures great sales yearly, EA weren't really forced to do anything drastic to improve the series. However with their 20th anniversary version and the 4th on the Xbox 360, EA have finally 'clicked' with Madden 09 much like Eli Manning did late last season, in his 4th season for the Giants. The game is sleek, shiny and finally starting to surpass the old version still being released on the PS2 and Xbox when it comes to features and playability. However, much like Eli Manning, EA still have plenty they can improve on heading into next year.

It seems in every new edition EA have a new game mode to slap on the back of the box feature list, and Madden 09 is no exception - in fact this year, a handful of new (or new-ish) modes were introduced. We of course see the return of all the standard modes including Play Now, Franchise, Superstar, Mini Games and Practice, but this year gamers will also find Online Leagues, Madden Moments, Virtual Trainer, and Madden Test. The Virtual Trainer is a training mode in a surreal virtual world environment built for those new to the series, while Madden Moments takes various key moments from the 07-08 NFL season and allows you to relive them or change history with a different outcome. The Online League mode is pretty self explanatory, although somewhat disappointing in that it's much like the old Madden mode known as 'Season', where you just play a single season with no offseason or year-to-year connection to speak of - it's basically just a tournament really. 32 humans can participate in an Online League and there are trades, but this style of mode will only ever be a stop gap until EA attempt proper online franchises in the eyes of most fans interested in such a mode.

With these aside, the biggest addition out of the four new modes as far as impact goes would have to be the Madden Test. This is actually the first thing the game will try to make you do, and it ties into the game's new adaptive difficulty feature, which goes by the name 'Madden IQ'. This is a system that adjusts various levels of difficulty across offensive passing, offensive running, defensive run stopping and defensive pass stopping in real time based on your skill level in the game, spitting out a number or 'IQ' so you can compare it with friends or with others online. What the Madden Test does, or is supposed to do, is gauge your skills in a mini-game like environment so an 'IQ' basis is formed from your skills before the real games start, which is then continuously modified as you play games. The concept behind this system is fantastic and would render slider settings redundant if it was implemented perfectly, but unfortunately it fails to achieve perfection in Madden 09.

For starters, the Madden Test itself isn't a very accurate representation of the gameplay. Take the Offensive Rushing drill for instance, which is very easy to score high marks on, but when you get into an actual game, you'll find rushing to be much, much harder. Even on quite low settings rushing can be difficult as defenders seem to blow up plays in the backfield constantly. Defending the pass is also a drill that seems to be less reliant on your skills, and more reliant on random luck, as the CPU drill team passing the ball could just have a string of bad throws and incompletions without any effort on your part at all, granting you a high score and hence hard gameplay defending the pass in actual games when you didn't deserve it. With this in mind, I found Madden IQ to work best when you avoid the Madden Test altogether, and simply allow the game to start adjusting based on your skills from the default difficulty level, which is 'All Pro', or '500' in IQ talk. It may be easy at first for some gamers, but this default base setting is a far better starting point for IQ to work its magic on than what Madden Test will likely generate.