Franchise Mode makes a return and should keep die-hard football fans happy. They can also attend Mini-Camp sessions to improve their skills and try their luck with the new Superstar Challenge, featuring various tasks that need to be completed with certain NFL players. This mode turns out to be a real treat, opening up the spectrum for players as they work with rookies and pros alike that they might not have played with before.

Sadly, this appealing content comes crashing down when it comes to multiplayer. Football pros can try their luck hooking up with others through AdHoc and Infrastructure, but it just ends up being nightmarish. Finding someone to play with is hard enough, but having to endure connection problems and lag throughout the simplest of game set-ups? It's just too much to even bother, unless EA can somehow mend its server issues. (That still won't solve local play problems, though. Good luck with that.)

Madden NFL 08 for the PSP feels like the black sheep of the family, a game that wants to fit in so badly with the rest of the football clan but comes up short way too often to get there. Maybe next year we'll see a game with better timing throughout its presentation, a functional multiplayer set-up and more modes. Right now, though, it just feels like a contender -- an odd situation considering this is the third Madden release for the system.