Another year, and the debate will continue - Acedeck's Blog

Acedeck's Blog

Another year, and the debate will continue

Posted on August 17, 2010 at 02:00 AM.

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Yet another year of Madden here, with a new and slightly improve version of last years' game. It's scary that it's becoming the norm in sports games to incrementally increase as they've been doing, with the exception of a few titles. I swear we saw more drastic improvements in the previous generation of consoles. With that said, this year's Madden has already been reviewed by most, and played by the rest. We've all had a little time to develop our gripes and opinions with the game, as we do every year.

I'll start with my own opinion, without going into detail like a review would do.

When Madden 10 came out, I had a lot of hope for the series. The introduction of gang tackling, or at least the initial stages of the feature, gave me hope that they'd finally get with the program. I won't even lie, I've always been a 2k5 fan. I've bought Madden every year since, though I also bought it prior to the exclusivity deal. I fondly remember Madden 05, still being my favorite Madden of all time. Even though I preferred 2k5, as many did/do, I still thought it was the peak of the Madden series. After that, it was time to start with the Xbox 360 (which was a major fail, imo). It's the time the series headed downhill, not just because of the deal, but because so many features were stripped out of the game. It really is a shell of its former self.

That leads me to this year's game. There's a lot to like, to be honest. The presentation is improved, still stale, but improved. They've fine tuned a lot within the game. The game has a better feel to it, overall.

Honestly though, this game feels almost identical to Madden 10, with the introduction of some new problems. It makes me wonder if there's ever any hope for this series to actually make any real strides in improving the entire game. For a game that has been around for over 20 years, it seems almost ridiculous that the special teams is borderline game breaking terrible. It seems almost ridiculous that they could let a franchise mode sit stagnate for this long now without enhancing it whatsoever. What's even more ridiculous is that the presentation is still light years behind a six year old game. My last gripe that's huge for me, why is it we still have these random tackle animations? Even though there's "gang tackling," though extremely dumbed down and non-physics based, I still feel like the game is giving me a bunch of pre-canned animations. I see so many plays that just don't look realistic in the game.

Looking back at the Pro-Tak that was introduced in Madden 10, I see almost no improvement. In fact, I've seen far less 3+ person gang tackles in Madden 11. Even then, it still feels so forced. It doesn't feel as natural as when defenders added on in NFL2k5. What was once hope for a feature has now turned into disappointment. Pro-Tak is the most disappointing aspect of Madden, in my opinion. When they announced last year that Madden 10 would be the "first" game to feature gang tackling, I laughed. Not only wasn't it the first (2k5 had it, to some extent), but it wasn't even implemented as well as it was back then.

I think we can all see where this is going. In short, I don't feel like this version of Madden, six years down the road from Madden 05 and 2k5, is doing that much to set itself apart. I don't feel it really puts this debate to rest. In fact, I think this debate will continue for at least a few more years, at the rate Madden is innovating and improving. It's not that Madden is bad; it's that it has so many things wrong that were right six years ago. How is that? Madden has become such a stagnate series, even it's little brother has surpassed it. NCAA is a far better game.

Comments

# 1 waspman3 @ Aug 17

Very good blog. I've heard and read countless blogs over the years describing what you did in detail. How could this be? I can't say I've been a die hard Madden fan. It's not holding my attention like it once did and 08 was my last year. To me they all seem to promise so much more only to buy it,play it and to leave ya scratching your head. It's a shame. I was recently in a Gamestop and even the sales Associate had confirmed this years Madden 11 were not exactly flying off the shelf. Think the price has actually dropped $10 also. I won't be buying it. In all honesty I enjoy the college game on console better and it tends to be leaning towards stagnation as well a bit. For playing fantasy football is where I have the most fun.

# 2 goalie @ Aug 17

2 questions:

1- why is "360 a major fail" in your opinion?

2- 2k5 is only on xbox (not 360) - do you play it, still?

# 3 Acedeck @ Aug 17

In response to goalie:

1) 360 was a major fail for Madden the year following Madden 05. The transition to the current generation hasn't been nice to the Madden series. To this day, we still have missing features. Madden 06 was an incredibly stripped down version of the game.

2) Yes, I know it was Xbox only. Yes, I do still play it occasionally. I just popped it in to compare, and my opinion remains the same. This debate will continue. This isn't the version of Madden that will silence this debate. Not that it'll ever end, but a superior version of Madden would at least put a lot of it to rest.