Madden NFL 06’s visuals don’t pack quite the punch of the console versions, but it certainly gets close to it. Players are detailed and animate very smoothly during games. You’ll even see multiple animations for dives, jukes, tackles, and even an idle animation or two between plays. Stadiums also look nice and are easily identifiable. The only real downside are the frame-rate issues that pop up almost every play. These issues actually become a major distraction later on as the game suffers from numerous load times that become annoying and kill the game’s rhythm.
Audio, on the other hand, is extremely well done – which actually came as a surprise. Going into the game, I had already prepared myself for the inevitable return of EA Trax, a feature that has become a minor annoyance for me. What I wasn’t expecting was the amount of commentary that made it into the game. Granted, John and Al aren’t as verbose as they are on the consoles, but it’s more than we’ve ever heard in a Madden handheld, so the novelty of that alone is pretty cool. On the downside, the few phrases that the duo does use are a tad overused, wearing away the novelty of the commentary. Other ambient sounds, namely crowd noises, help to give the game an added bit of authenticity.
