New Madden Nightmare, the New Console Generation, - Trick13's Blog

Trick13's Blog

New Madden Nightmare, the New Console Generation,

Posted on April 7, 2013 at 01:25 AM.

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The news of the next generation of gaming consoles might foster some excitement for most gamers. Many Madden fans may also have the tingles of renewed hope for the franchise as new and more powerful gaming machines are just around the corner. Madden gamers who started on the XBOX/PS2 game like myself on the other hand, well no lists of powerful specs are going to alleviate my dread.

Madden 25 is due out this summer. We are about eight years into this generation of consoles. Yet, for those of us who played Madden 05/06, we are still waiting for EA to catch up what they had 8 to 9 years ago. The graphics are better. Well, they are better until the players start to run anyway. So the visuals have improved and, and, well that is it. We have better graphics 8/9 years into this generation of consoles. Fans of the game from the last generation are still waiting on a number of features to return; in-game saves, formation substitutions, manual ("coach"/user controlled) defensive assignments, player morale, contract holdouts, restricted free agency, cut moves, user controlled celebrations (and not that run to the shaded part BS), edit player models, and more.

New consoles means another transition for EA/Tiburon.They failed the last one in spectacular fashion.

The news of next generation consoles last time around filled me with hope that Madden would become something greater than what it was. The prospect of more powerful hardware and increased capacity of the "next" generation disks led me to think that more could be accomplished. I had visions of physics based player movement, assigning celebrations to certain buttons within the edit player tool, sidelines filled with actual players (not just cut scenes), permanent/ saveable adjustments within plays (think HC09) and so much more.

The PS3/360, when first announced, signaled in my mind the coming era of personalization and customization. I was thinking of the numerous options EA would now be able to afford gamers. I thought of leagues with custom salary cap growth, realigned conferences and/or divisions, multiple difficulty settings (ie Game - All-Pro, Trades - All Madden, Scouting - All-Madden), 3-team trades, more numerous trade slots rather than being relegated to 3 per side. Instead this generation has been marred within Madden by the utter lack of any personalization or customization.

I also thought the next generation of consoles would bring about improved AI, adaptive in nature thus preventing "money" routes and the same 5 plays from being run all game long. Visions of "game breaks", showing scoring replays from other games, and half time shows danced in my head. The AI in Madden 13 may well be the worst we have seen for HUM vs HUM games of any Madden game from this or the last generation. The presentation is severely inadequate when you look back and realize that "a to remain nameless game" had a half time show 8 years ago.

The precipice of a new "next generation" is upon us, but PS4/720 will not create any hope within me for the future of Madden.As the saying goes, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!"