Madden

So, up until last week I was set on picking up Madden this year.  There is no APF 2K9 to give me an alternate choice (thanks again for that NFL), so Madden it was going to be.  And after not playing an NFL game last year, I was kind of looking forward to it.

 

But, thanks to last week's demo, that is all out the window.  Nothing about that demo impressed me.  I think the Madden IQ and adaptive difficulty thing is just asking for trouble.  And from what I've been reading, EA decided to remove CPU Sliders this year as well.  Wow.  Are you kidding me?  First, NCAA's CPU Sliders were completely bogus and did not work and now Madden doesn't even have CPU Sliders!!!  I have ZERO faith that Tiburon's programmers are talented enough (or even have the time), based on what we've been getting from them the last few years, to implement an adaptive intelligence system that will work perfectly for everyone and we'll have no need to adjust the way the CPU plays.

 

Plus, I don't want the game to change to accommodate my weaknesses, I want to adapt to the game myself, by getting better.  Does the game take into account what team you are playing when deciding to change the game to your play-style?  What if you cannot rush because you are using a team that just has a really weak running game?  I do not want the game making the running game easier!  I can't run because my team is not supposed to run!!  Like I said, this system sounds very shady and it is just asking for trouble.  The fact that you have no CPU Sliders just magnifies it by 10X!  They should have spent all that time just improving the AI and tweaking the preset difficulty settings.

 

My impressions from the actual gameplay were pretty bad as well.  The QB dropback is still so unbelievable ugly and unrealistic I cannot believe it has not been addressed yet!  The animations are still 5 years behind 2K as far as realistic movement is convcerned.  Graphically, the game is looking nice.  The stadiums and field look fantastic, but the animation just kills the the visuals for me.  And what was EA thinking by giving you a demo that only has 1:30 minutes of gameplay and you cannot play defense?  Great job!

 

I don't like to judge games from a demo (negatively judge it at least) so I will wait until the game is released and see what the folks over at Operation Sports have to say.  I hear EA is already working on patches to address some of the problems found by those with an early copy of the game.  Who knows, maybe I'll be picking the game up in October or something, if the gameplay drastically improves from what I expereinced, but it won't be next week.