My first game of Madden NFL 11 - First Impression - JohnDoe8865's Blog

JohnDoe8865's Blog

My first game of Madden NFL 11 - First Impression

Posted on August 10, 2010 at 02:07 PM.

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So I just finished playing my first official game of Madden NFL 11. I played as my team, the Carolina Panthers and I played against the KC Chiefs in Charlotte. I won 69-17. The following thoughts are gonna be very free-form and I'm just gonna type it as it comes to me.

I started by putting all of the penalties except holding, clipping, and face mask at 100. Then I set the skill level to Pro, figuring it was a good place to start. Wow, I was wrong, at least I hope so.

I had both RBs DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart run for 200+ yards EACH. My QB, 69 rated Matt Moore threw for over 300 yards and connected on 3 TD strikes and no INTs. I put up somewhere in the neighborhood of 850 total yards of offense.

I can say one thing for sure. This game, out of the box, on pro level, is broken. I have never won a game so easily without trying to cheat the computer in my entire life. I've been playing football games since Madden 93 and Joe Montana Football 94 on Sega Genesis.

The game itself is beautiful to look at and very nice in motion as well and I get a good chuckle out of Gus Johnson's lines several times. I am however bitterly disappointed to see the Halftime show removed for seemingly no reason at all (on Xbox 360). That's the kind of thing that just makes me shake my head.

I used a combination of Gameflow and Advanced Play calling in the game. Let me tell you why I don't see myself using Gameflow. I like to run a two back offense with the Panthers. I cannot do this with Gameflow. Someone at Tiburon should have at least included the option of sub packages in the Gameflow system. With out, it is worthless to me and I'm sure many others for one off games.

Now to be fair, I haven't tried franchise mode to see if I could set specific formations to use specific players and then have Gameflow actually recognize that. If not, then Gameflow is completely useless to me. It reminds me of a feature we had in NFL Fever 2003 or 2004 I think, where the coach called the play. It didn't work that well back then either.

I will be in the forums looking for some major slider help. The special teams game is broken on kick and punt returns, there is no way to deny that. You cannot make it out past the 20 on KR and the CPU is lucky to make it out to the 15. No one picks up blocking assignments. It's almost like they forgot to program blocking AI for the kick and punt returns. I really hope that sliders can help alleviate some of this along with it being far too easy to run and stop the CPU run.

Now of course on All Pro maybe the CPU will stop me more often and I'll have to fear the CPU offense. I hope so. What I am concerned about after just one game, is the brain dead blocking and super speed on pursuit of kick and punt returns.

The same issue that required a patch for Madden 10 is back this year as well, and that is telepathic QBs who unload the ball just before taking a blindside sack. This was a major complaint last year, and it's strange to see it again in M11. I wonder if they worked off of a patched build of M10 to start Madden 11 or the base Madden 10 build before anything was patched in. It would seem the latter when you see the same issues that needed patching last year pop up again this year.

I can honestly say that my first impressions are disappointment, some regret at buying it, and a feeling that Madden has taken one step back this year after two steps forward last year.

This is all based on one game and some fair time in practice mode. That's why it's my first impression. If first impressions are everything, then Madden 11 will be fighting an uphill battle with gamers all year long IMO.

I'm not giving up on the game yet, but I am going to have to shelf it until the community can work some slider magic or EA decides to complete the game through patches.

Does anyone know if EA has the same tuning capabilities that NCAA 11 has? If not, I think it is sorely needed. A tuning patch would be a good start and wouldn't count against the console "2 patch" rule if it was done like NCAA 11.

One more thing, I'm waiting for the patch for the strategy pad. It just isn't intuitive. Not only that, but with how quick the CPU snaps the ball, it doesn't really work either. You can't press up on receivers and pinch your line for example. There isn't time to make more than one adjustment and forget about single player audibles on defense.

I'm done for now. If you made it this far, congrats.