The Most Important Factor for Tiburon - adembroski's Blog

adembroski's Blog

The Most Important Factor for Tiburon

Posted on March 30, 2009 at 05:26 AM.

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Most of us are now riding high on the hope that Madden NFL 10 will be the best Madden to date. The attention to detail in the screen shots is positively outstanding. Madden 10 Art Director Michael Young has shown he is a man with vision and talent. The little things we've seen for gameplay are all adding up to something special.

As positive as things are looking, now just over 4 months from release, we have yet, as a community, really touched on Tiburon's biggest problem over the past several years; Stability.

Certainly it's not a big secret that my favorite football game ever comes from Tiburon: NFL Head Coach 09. To me, this is the game that gave me my faith in the current Madden team. It's brilliance is in its balance. The genius with which the game was structured and organized is evidence that there are, indeed, great minds at Tiburon waiting to be unleashed. But yet, for all the accomplishments of Josh Looman, Donny Moore, Chris Staymates, and the rest of the Head Coach team, NFL Head Coach 09 is perhaps the clearest example of where Tiburon has repeatedly let us down in the Next Gen era.

NFL Head Coach is plagued by freezes. Mid-week, mid-game, every menu option is an adventure as you progress slowly, just waiting for the next time the clock simply stops moving. We Head Coach faithful simply make several game saves and hope we don't lose anything big in the process, and mentally prepare ourselves for perhaps having to play a game twice, as the abandonment of the franchise means no more patches. Madden fans don't have to fear that, but the same freezing issues have also made franchise mode virtually unplayable.

Games are becoming infinitely more complex in the modern era, and only look to get more so. Pure professional pride should push Tiburon to eliminate these embarrassing plights on what can be otherwise solid games. They are the only major game developer I can think of that is so inundated by these problems. And now, with EA Sports barely scratching the PC platform anymore, the are no longer developing for innumerable different hardware setups.

It's time, Tiburon, to finally thaw out franchise mode.

Comments

# 1 CLEAR17 @ Mar 31

I absolutely agree with this. I sold my Madden 09 and Head Coach 09 because of the freezing issues. I was so frustrated with this years game. I expect Madden 10 franchise mode to be the deepest, best franchise in sports gaming...with no freezing bugs

# 2 Vikes1 @ Apr 2

Great point Adem.

All the great adds being brought to Madden '10' won't mean much if people are experiencing freezing issues. I've returned copies of Madden more than a few times because of freezing. And within the first few weeks of purchase...I'll keep returning copies until I get one that doesn't seemingly lockup.

Not sure how common it is for people to return Madden games because of freezing problems. But possibly if many more did...EA may take this issue more seriously. $60 is way too much to pay for a game you can't play.

# 3 XtremeDunkz @ Apr 21

With all the new additions there's always the possibility for stability issues, but unlike head coach I believe if something was found EA would patch it asap.

# 4 xblake16x @ May 16

at first i thought thaw was throw and was not happy...

but true HC is the best! I love managing the team, and how potential/progression works in the game. My players never automatically reached there potential sometime in their career, they had to produce for that to happen. But what was truly great was the salary cap actually working! I felt like a real team where they actually lose players and most of the time have to build through the draft