Of all the "new and improved" Madden NFL games to come down the pike over the last 16 years, Madden NFL 06 seems to be the first one to feature a truly improved passing game.

Where previous iterations always let defensive adepts rule the roost, 06 busts through the thuggery with an advancement of the hot-routes system, where you can actually envision and select a receiver, pre-snap.

Moreover, you can now lead each pass, throwing well ahead of or lobbing over your intended receiver, making him work for the completion but keeping clear of the D on his tail. More like the real deal than ever before.

EA has also gone to great lengths in gimmickry with 06's create-a-player mode that has you selecting your future hall-of-famer's gene pool--his parents--and well as a good three hours of shopping for an agent, taking IQ tests and a bunch of other role-playing elements--with perplexingly random results, regardless. For those ardent Madden-ites who can play 20 virtual seasons in a season (all billion of them), there's a lot of nitty gritty to keep them happy.

For everyone else, there's just excellent football.

TIP: If you load a player from NCAA Football 06 or NFL Street 2 into NFL Superstar mode of Madden NFL 06 (PS2 and Xbox), you'll unlock Dan Baker (software engineer/game designer/real-time rendering guru) as an agent. Not quite sure why you'd want to do that, but there you go.