August 15, 2008

More Madden . . .

A few more impressions.  I have not been able to play a full game since Tuesday.  Something always comes up and I have to stop playing.  I don't understand why we do not have in-game saves by now.  Is it that difficult to implement?  Most of the impressions below involve graphical observations, etc.  Note, I had my nitpick hat on last night.
 
- I've probably played about 3½ quarters total since Tuesday (not counting time spent on the practice field of trying some Madden Moments) and I have not score a TD.  So far, in 7½ quarters as the Dolphins, I have scored 1 offensive touchdown.  Come to think of it, that is very realistic!  =)
 
The thing is, I actually move the ball down the field pretty well.  I mix a combination of runs, short passes, the occasional 15 - 20 yard pass, etc., and I move the chains with good consistency.  But once I get in the Red Zone I can't close the deal.  I haven't missed a FG yet though.
 
- The more I play it, the less I like the animation and player movement in this game.  Some isolated animations look great (catches, tackles, RB getting away from defender) but overall the game does not look realistic in motion at all.  Running animations are terrible.  It does not look like the runners are even running at full speed (regarding the effort the animation shows), and your players can zig-zag around the field in a very unrealistic fashion.  Sure, that is great for player control (you want your guy to go left, he's going left) but it doesn't really take momentum or physics into account, so it totally kills the realism.
 
- Kickers' legs move way too slow when kicking the ball.  At the speed their legs moves you expect the ball to travel no more than 15 yards down field, yet the kick-off goes into the endzone.  This is similar to how the throwing animations don't match how far the QB's are throwing the ball.  What looks like the animation for a 10 yards pass sails through the air for 40 yards.
 
- To satisfy my curiosity, I popped in Madden 2006.  Yes, I still own it.  I prefer to keep it than to get the $1.00 Gamestop will give me for it.  The player models in that game, while grotesquely 'roided out, seemed to display more detail in the jerseys and overall textures and poly count.  The current models look far more human and accurate, but they don't sport the texture detail of 2006.  In 2006 you can see the sweat in their arms and neck and the skin textures were very detailed.  Just an observation, I agree with pulling system resources away from generating these minute details that you can only spot in Instant Replay and using them in other areas, but I wish we could have the detail of 2006 with 2009's models.
 
- Maybe I was just in a weird mood yesterday, but visually, the game just wasn't looking that impressive to me.  I don't know why because I thought it looked pretty good when I picked it up on Tuesday.  The grass textures and lighting are really the highlights of this game.  I find all other aspects pretty lack-luster at this point.  Maybe it will grow on me.  I think this all stems from the animation.  That is my pet peeve.  If the animation was actually life-like, it would make everything else look better.
 
- The commentary is a mixed bag.  The play by play by Tom Hammond is completely robotic.  Sounds like the radio announcer without that weird "radio filter" applied to the sound.  Chris Collinsworth however sounds absolutely fantastic!  Completely natural and fluid.  He provides the best commentary in a football game I have ever heard.  Now, that being said, poor Tom's job is much harder to do in videogame form.  He needs to read his lines with a very stable timbre and tone because all his words need to be spliced together to form the play by play.  So a regular sentence you hear from him might be made up of separate sound bytes.  Collinsworth however is free to just talk away because all his sound is played back exactly how he says it.  Eitherway, if not for Tom's robotic delivery, the commentary in Madden would have been a huge win this year.
 
- Presentation is a step forward as well, although it is still not where I would ultimately like it to be.  But, since I just popped in Madden 2006 last night, it is night and day from that game.  I can't believe how absolutely dreadful 2006 was in this regard!  The new graphical overlays look great and the game does a great job of throwing stats on-screen as the game goes on.  I love that.  The view of the Stadium from the outside before the game is a welcome addition as well.  But the overall presentation still feels bland.  All the cutscenes are really weak.  Last night one of the players tore his knee, the graphic said he was "Out for the season" and the cutscene just shows the player on the floor for a bit, in pain, trying to get up and having a hard time, yet nobody comes to help him.  No training staff, his other players are just 5 yards away watching him.  He finally stands up and begins to hop off the field.  I think back to the really great injury cutscenes of NFK 2K5 and these pale in comparison.  I also think they should not tell you the extent of the injury immediately.  They should keep you in suspense while the doctors check your player out, etc.
 
- There is very little emotion in the game.  The crowd noise is pretty static and I just don't see the emotion on the field or on the sidelines to make this feel like a real NFL game.  The sidelines in particular are completely void of life, with low polygon player models which are totally uninteractive.  They just stand there looking straight ahead no matter what is happening.  I got spoiled by APF's great, active sidelines.
 
Overall, I think I am going through 2K withdrawal.  I haven't played a Madden game in 2 years and I have APF fresh in my memory, so I am comparing Madden to that game.  I am hoping I'll begin to adapt to it soon, although I will say this, I do prefer Visual Concepts' vision for what a football videogame should be.  I like the feel of their games more overall.  I like the details they get right.  I like the direction they were taking the genre way more than the direction Madden seems to be going, which is to cater more to the casual and tournament crowd.
 
We'll see.  I'm going to wait for the opening day roster to start a franchise and I'll see how the game grows on me.  I really do want to like it.  Really.
 

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