Tag: Madden

This is one of those stupid first impression articles that long time sports gamers dread. The kind that ends in It’s the best one yet!”. You know; the kind that we all hate, love to slam, and all that jazz. It had to happen to me some day.

I only had time for a quick game last night. I did not play around with any of the settings, other than changing my favorite team to the Atlanta Falcons. I think that means the game was on Pro, and 7 minute quarters with an accelerated clock.  Not sure if the IQ thing was turned on, but I think it was because IQ500 was displayed at the start and end of the games.

I picked the 70’s red helmets, gray pants, and current red jerseys. Horrid combination, but fun. Played Tampa Bay and won 17-0.

The presentation is truly upgraded, and is a welcome enhancement. No, it has nothing to do with the gameplay, but it is worth pointing out. Besides, I only played one game so I don’t have a lot of gamplay bobbles to throw your way!

I started the game on defense, and I had no idea what I was doing so I just used the “Ask Madden” option. Same for controls; I could not work much magic, and after looking at the in-game controls options, I really did not see much in the way of “taking control of your player” or special moves options. I hope this means I just missed a menu or setting. Maybe the game defaults to some sort of easy setting? Regardless, I held the Buccaneers to three and out.

On offense I opened the game up with Matt Ryan’s new toy. Quick Pass route to Tony Gonzalez. While I only had a short gain, I can imagine what the Falcons will do with Gonzalez this year, and it will be impressive. I ended the game with Gonzalez having 4 catches; one other designed play, while the other two where dump off passes.

In past versions of Madden, I never felt like I had time to really learn the playbook. Clock is always ticking. Same for this year. I need to see if there is an option where the accelerated clock runs after you select your play. One thing I did notice straight away – use the Right Analog stick to quickly change the sets. Sub your HB, WR for TE, and put in a Big set. I love the ability to quickly and easily put Michael Turner and Jerious Norwood in the same backfield. The “Falcons” formation is also included; this is Atlanta’s version of the wildcat formation.

The only nitpicks I can offer up right now are not really gameplay related. Sometimes Madden (via the “Ask Madden” feature) will talk over the commentary, leading to a confusing array of dual audio channels. I also saw a couple of graphical animation type screw ups. These resulted in the ball carrier quickly (warp speed) doing something. Usually as part of a tackle sequence.

I won the game 17-0. I had the ball 20+ minutes to the Bucs 7 minutes of possession. I held the Bucs to under 100 yards of offense (2-3 sacks hurt their cause); they did have ~125 kick return yards. I forget my passing yardage, but it was somewhere around 200, while rushing yards were around 60, with a 2.5 yards/rush average. Remember, this is default settings, me not knowing the controls, and after a couple Abita Jockamo IPAs.

I think there is some hope in this version of Madden, but a new season always brings fresh hope. I am not going to end this post by saying that this is the best version ever [WTF, did you think I was a complete tool?], but at least I did not walk away thinking the game sucks. In my book, I call that a win.

The early Madden 10 reviews are extremely positive. According to Metacritic Madden 10 currently has an 88% rating from 12 reviews. Of course most of these are mega site type reviews, but the fact that the game has not been panned is encouraging.

I have to wait a couple more hours before I can crack open the game, but do plan to spend some time with it over the weekend.

Received an email from Amazon earlier today. Madden has shipped and is due to arrive tomorrow. Of course I will be at work, but that is besides the point.

Nothing else to say today except that Madden will be here tomorrow after I get home from work. Will my wife and kids let me have some quality PS3 + Madden 10 time?

IGN just reviewed Madden 10 and awarded the game an 8.9 (out of 10). Happy days?

There are issues with some of the new aspects that have worked their way into Madden (and things that have been taken out), but there’s no denying that this is the best pure football experience in videogame history.

Back in the day it seems like everyone would say that the latest game was the greatest ever, but these days this sort of praise is pretty rare.

Thankfully the gameplay in Madden NFL 10 is, in a word, fantastic. I can’t tell you how many people walked by my desk as I was playing and wondered if the NFL season started early this year. The speed of the game has been ratcheted down only slightly so hitting holes while running and making jukes is just a bit easier than it has been. That’s not to say that the game isn’t difficult – ramp up the difficulty to find out for yourself – but everything has an excellent ebb and flow this time around.

I think I just got a halfsie. God willing and if the creeks don’t rise, I will be playing Madden 10 this time next week. The countdown rolls on.

Happy Saturday!

We are officially one week out from the arrival of Madden 10. A week and a day away from the Falcon’s first preseason game in Detroit. Maybe more importantly we are two weeks away from my oldest son turning eleven-teen. Let the countdowns begin!

I have been enjoying Bill Abner’s Madden 10 posts at The Nut and the Feisty Weasel. I have picked up a few interesting points from Mr. Abner’s posts:

-sliders work; adjustments are noticeable
-sliders need to be adjusted on All-Pro to enable AI rushing to be effective
-offensive linemen do not always block correctly
-WRs pickup a lot of extra YAC because receivers may be too hard to tackle
-unpredictably in a good way; the game has some randomness to gameplay elements
-some teams HB actually split carries, but backup HBs average very few yards per rush attempt
-draft AI looks to be much improved; rookie ratings are not over the top

I am really looking forward to Madden 10. Why? I have not played in videogame football in months. I passed on NCAA Football 10. Perhaps most important, this new version of Madden actually looks improved and fun to play.

I am a little disappointed in this Madden 10 franchise article from IGN, but it is hard to complain too much because there is no other f’ing news worth posting.

I haven’t had the time to get all the way to the draft in my franchise just yet, but EA Sports is saying that they’ve crafted more than 8,000 rookies for use in the draft and that there’s new AI logic governing moves made by you and the CPU. Hopefully that means that you won’t be able to swindle teams out of all of their first-round picks this year.

I wonder how long this bird has had the game? It is nice and all to write about the new improved presentation, but as a Falcons season ticket holder, I already know all about going into the Dome and standing in the concession lines. How about the statistics? Did the author simulate any seasons? Did writer actually try to swindle the CPU teams?

I wish someone would post something that was PS3 specific. I understand that the 360 is dominating the world, but you would think with all the extra nuts and bolts under the PS3’s hood, something worth mentioning would pop out. Except for the price point, the PS3 really does have shades of Dreamcast written all over it. If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.

Last weekend I finally broke down and preordered Madden 10 (PS3) from Amazon. I figured I would crumble into the pressure sooner or later, but Amazon was running a special deal that would also give me a $10 Amazon gift card. OK, nothing really special, but I was game. Besides, they did this same deal last year, so it was expected. Call it tradition!

I wanted to make sure I got the game on release day (Friday, August 14) so I selected Next Day shipping [$3.99 for us Prime suckers]. Imagine my surprise when the order shows me that I will get the game on the 18th. F that noise! I emailed Amazon customer support and basically told them to F-Off; WTF happened to the “release day guarantee” offer/option?

Apparently this option was not available when I placed my order, because Amazon only makes this option available when they can confirm availability of an item. WTF? Madden. You have got to be kidding me. As if. There are going to be copies of Madden 10 sitting on shelves across the country for the next 18 months. Good grief!

I was told that I had to cancel my order and place a new one. Screw that; did not want to lose my $10 gift card. I attempted to place a new (or second) order, but the “release day” option was still not being offered. This sucks. So much for Amazon Prime shipping. I may as well break down and go to a … real … store. Scary.

Just for shits and giggles I was on Amazon a little while ago and noticed that the “release day guarantee” option was now available for Madden 10. I went to my order, updated the shipping option, and selected “release day” and much to my pleasure [something like that] I am now due to receive Madden 10 on August 14th. Plus I get the $10 gift card. Plus I now do not have any shipping charges.

Happy days!

I recently sold my Madden 2009 Collector’s Edition in preparation of the next yearly Madden installment. What is going to make this year different than any other? After all, with each Madden release I relive the “been there, done that” experience. Last year I completely wasted $90; never got into Head Coach 2009 and while Madden 2009 was a decent PS3 effort it was just not enough to capture me by the shorthairs and really get my attention.

Truth be told, this seems to be the story of the various Madden releases over the last few years. I get them on Day 1, play them for a few weeks, then real football starts and Madden gets put aside for NCAA Football or other activities.

GameShark has an excellent, in-depth interview with this year’s Madden team, and it gives me great hope that Madden 10 will be different. In a good way.

The experience out of the box (Pro mode) is tuned towards a more offensive style of play – longer time in the pocket, receivers get open more easily, more tackles are broken, etc., to make sure that everyone can have a really good time from the first time they boot up. Once you make the switch to All-Pro though, we really wanted to juice up the realism – accurate 40 times, accurate time in the pocket (3-5 seconds), etc. We want our All-Pro experience to really invoke another layer of strategy and planning – it shouldn’t only be about who has the best twitch skills. Football is much more of a chess match than any other sport…we can’t ignore that part of the game if we want to be the ultimate NFL simulation. I personally want Joe Cowboys Fan to be able to play Madden (and win) thanks to his knowledge of the game and strategy, and not be hampered if his “gaming skill” isn’t up to par.

These days my “gaming skill” sucks. If Madden 10 can pull off a decent simulation that makes football fans and joystick jockeys (does this term still apply) happy, then we could have a very interesting Madden on the way.

The comments about using the Dolphins Chad Pennington vs. Pat White to see the differences between QB ratings for arm strength and accuracy (short vs. mid vs. long distances) is extremely encouraging. In fact, the whole article in encouraging. Fans wanting some dose of reality with player attributes, something that separates one player from the next are going to be happy that the number of 90+ overall rating players has been dramatically reduced.

Take CB speed for example. I did a rating analysis on this to start out the Madden NFL 10 pre-production cycle and discovered that every CB in the game had between 87-99 SPD in Madden NFL 09. I looked further, nearly 80% of ALL CB’s fell between 4 ratings points (88-92)! It’s pretty obvious that you aren’t going to see or feel any major differences out there in gameplay with them being so similar. The range now starts at 75-99, with a far greater number of CBs now in the low to mid 80’s.

The Online Franchise mode is the “big” addition for this year. I am not sure if I will get into this or not, but there is promise of lots of different ways to play. The fact that I can actually do a single player online franchise is interesting because that will be so much easier than the old fashion Chronicles way from back in the day.

The only downside to franchise mode seems to be that it is limited to 10 seasons. I could not tell from the interview if this is specific to online franchises or offline as well; it was mentioned in the context of online franchises, but I bet it is a limitation for on or offline modes. Except for simulating a long run of seasons, these days I do not have time to actually play through multiple seasons so this is probably a non issue for me as well as most gamers.

Looks like in-game saves did not make the cut. I can only hope for a nice handy accelerated clock feature to speed the game along.

If you have not already seen the interview, take a few minutes to check it out. Plenty of info there to wet your appetite for Madden 10. I hope that we are not in for a serious letdown.

Heading to Amazon to preorder.