The 'award winning' series from DSM rolls on today with us looking at a category near and dear to my heart: gameplay. Let's face it..the gameplay in Madden has always been artificial feeling and not very fluid or realistic. In fact, I would argue we are so far off from a fairly realistic game you could almost laugh at any claim to the contrary. However, I won't laugh when someone says we are getting closer, because we are.

In fact, I think this year's game took some major steps with the gameplay overall, but as with most new things that are introduced...it is way off-balance and still needs a lot of work. An EASports Madden producer once said that 'they were closer than ever to a perfect NFL sim.' To that I say yeah you are, but that doesn't mean you are very close still.

Gameplay: So here goes nothing, what promises to be one of the most extensive articles written over this ever? Very possibly, I'm not stopping until I feel satisfied I have covered most everything wrong with the gameplay.

• Deep Balls- One thing I heard this year is that the deep ball is way too hard to complete this year in Madden. Well...in the NFL it can be way too hard sometimes as well. Completing a deep pass should mean you have a few of the following things going for you: 1)A good mismatch between your receiver and the defender, 2)A QB who can deliver the ball, 3)A line that can protect long enough, 4)Good enough playcalling to exploit all of the following with good timing. Most people who play Madden just hit their receivers button without thinking about any of this and hoping their roll of the dice works.
  
  For once, EA has started to punish guys like that and make guys pay who try to do that sort of thing and they aren't happy. We don't want to screw over sales, but if the game was acting realistically people should acknowledge it is going to be harder on all difficulties..although you could dumb down things on some levels to give the kids and newcomers a chance.
• Keep Improving the Blocking Game-This has been a major issue with EA Football games the past however many years you could remember. In fact, it was becoming embarrassing that EA has done nothing about this part of the game that many would argue is the most important. I said that we needed new animations earlier in this series and some of them needed to include LBers getting caught in traffic, fighting off of blocks, etc. Well that can help improve this aspect of the game quite a bit almost instantly. Add in tons of new animations in regards to blocking to make it look more realistic and people will see the engine is already pretty solid.
  
  What we also need is for that solid engine to become an absolutely awesome engine. We should be able to get linemen to call blocks on the fly, add attributes for blitz recognition and calling and start seeing guys pick up that sort of thing or not. I really think that this is a part of the game EA has thought was just a slight distraction the past few years with how they've empathetically put some but not a ton of effort into it. What needs to be done is when you are revamping playbooks completely revamp how blocking is done..that will help a ton. Next you add new attributes and make the whole thing more fluid and dynamic and move away from what is an artificial feeling system. Then add a ton of new animations and you will see that the game just looks better...all from fixing the OLine play.
• Tackling System...More Gang Tackles- This is something I've already touched on so I'm not going to hit on it too much here. Just once again I ask you to watch a game of football and tell me how many times a 1 on 1 tackle is made and then watch Madden and tell me. You will find that in a real game a 1 on 1 tackle happens maybe 50% of the time but more likely down near 10-20% as there is always more than one person in on a tackle. On the other hand, in Madden that number is easily 60-70%. So once again we have one of the basic aspects of football being bastardized by being misrepresented so badly. It's another aspect of the game that needs a fixin' and quick.

Unforuntately for you, this article is so long we are splitting it into two parts. Check out the next edition tommorow!