Like a lot of sports fans, I have spent time getting to know the “popular girl” of sports gaming, EA’s Madden 10.

What probably separates my experience from most is that, as someone who has yet to buy an EA football game this generation, I’m usually content with a rental of the latest Madden or NCAA Football. I'm usually content because a weekend of play tends to be enough time for me to realize that the game is still way behind my old flame, All-Pro Football 2K8, in the one area that matters most: gameplay.

This time around I spent more than one weekend with the game, but now that I have had some time to get a feel for the game, here are some reasons why I feel Madden 10 still can't match up to the standards set by my reigning king of gameplay, All-Pro Football 2K8.

Some say football games are won and lost in the trenches, and if there’s one overwhelming complaint I have with Madden this year, it’s that the game’s outdated line play really killed a lot of my initial enjoyment with the game.

Pass Rush

It’s easy to see that, in spite of some slight improvements to the user-controlled side of the game, the same old "patty cake" animations are still in full effect for Madden 10 whenever you let two AI lines battle each other. This leads to a poor overall pass rush because defensive tackles can’t bull rush and collapse the middle of the pocket with any consistency, and defensive ends still can't get up the field quick enough to make opposing quarterbacks step up or out of the pocket.

Instead, what routinely plays out in Madden 10 is a situation where the QB has enough time to text his girlfriend before the pressure finally gets close enough to force a pass.

But what really pushes the Madden 10 pass rush into the realm of complete frustration for me is the way AI quarterbacks still have that sixth sense, which allows them to sling bullet passes at the exact moment defenders get a step or two away from getting the sack.

Madden 10's robo-QB problems are made even worse by the new ability to throw the ball while getting hit, which allows the AI quarterbacks to completely avoid sacks by passing the ball out at the last second, even if it's a wounded duck that should have been flagged as intentional grounding.

In my Titans franchise, for example, I was able to record a sack in only one my first six games, despite the fact that Tennessee possesses one of the best pass rushes in the NFL (fifth overall in sacks for the 2008 season).

In the game where I did get some sacks, I didn't really earn them either. I sacked NY Jets QB Mark Sanchez (five times on the day) -- not because my pass rushers were beating the offensive linemen -- but simply because Sanchez didn’t have a high enough awareness rating to blind-heave the ball out of trouble when his seven seconds (or more) of leisure time in the pocket were finally spent.

Run Blocking

While it's great to see EA finally taking suction blocking out of Madden, the holes it exposes in the engine's blocking logic are massive, and at times, game-crushing.

The lack of suction blocking makes it easier than ever for Madden defenders to warp off their blocks whenever the ball carrier comes nearby -- they can then slide into position for an infamous "time-shift tackle."

In a truly bizarre move, the offensive linemen even help the defenders get off blocks in Madden 10 -- this is thanks to a new "push-out" animation that releases the engaged defender out wide, and often, right into the path of the lineman's own running back.

But as bad as the AI, warping and new push-out animations are on any given run play, what really makes running the ball a profanity-laden experience (even with a Titans offensive line rated in the 90s and 80s) is the way that the sprint button completely breaks down the blocking AI, often bringing linemen to a complete halt.

At times the sprint button in Madden 10 seems more like a way to activate some sort of special “seizure mode” where linemen completely lose track of their blocking assignments and often end up running away from obvious blocking targets who are only a few yards ahead of them.

Just how bad is the run blocking in Madden 10?

So bad that four guys cannot block one defender. So bad that three players cannot even block a guy that's lined up directly in front of them before the snap.

Route Running

The route running in Madden games has always been sketchy at best. The main problem is that simple fundamentals, such as decelerating into a cut and accelerating out of it, have always been absent from the game.

This year's game is no different because the players in Madden 10 still don't realistically go through their routes. Instead, wide receivers just sort of jog through routes at an even speed, with no real sense of weight or acceleration.

So basically while the new jostling animations between defensive backs and wide receivers are a welcome addition to the game, what good are they when the receiver has no real way to separate himself from a defensive back, outside of pure speed?

I think the reason why speed has always been the dominate attribute in Madden games is because players spend about 90 percent of each play running around at top speed with no need to ever cut or decelerate.

Until cutting, acceleration and deceleration become a major part of Madden's route-running system, the passing engine will always be inferior to what’s on display in 2K football games to me.

Catch Logic

There has already been a lot of talk about how successful screen and flat routes are in Madden 10, but one reason why they work so well is because players catch everything. This is unfortunate because, outside of that issue, the passing game is very enjoyable.

It doesn't seem to matter if the ball is coming to a halfback, fullback, defensive lineman or middle linebacker, if a pass finds its way into a player's hands, it seems like he will come down with the grab in Madden 10 more times than not.

The unrealistic catch logic makes it much harder to play defense against a good offensive player (since everyone on the field is a pass-catching weapon). But on the other side of the ball, it also leads to a lot of unrealistic interceptions that should just be dropped by stone-handed linebackers.

Tackling

While Pro-Tak has definitely improved the tackling system in Madden, the bulk of Madden 10's tackles still seem to boil down to two basic types:

1. An instant collision where the ball carrier is clipped below the waist, triggering a canned tripping animation.

2. The ball carrier gets stood up awkwardly while a "group hug" session breaks out on the field.

Neither of these situations feels particularly realistic, and the group hugging in particular brings out all sorts of issues -- mainly defenders warping onto what seem like “magnetic” piles.

More concerning than the pileups, though, are the tripping animations that result from ball carriers getting clipped below the waist. In Madden 10 ball carriers getting tripped often fall forward for an extra 3 or 4 yards that, momentum wise, they don't realistically deserve. I believe this happens because the tackling system in Madden is still too reliant upon canned animations that do not adhere to proper physics or locomotion.

The prevalence of these scripted tackles also means that, aside from the Pro-Tak group hugs, defenders can't really come in to deliver a second hit that pushes an engaged ball carrier backwards like they can in All-Pro Football 2K8. This seems to be because once a scripted tackle animation begins in Madden 10, it's impossible for another defender to touch the ball carrier and change whether he falls forwards or backwards.

Put simply, how can the defense be expected to "fight for every yard" in Madden 10 when the offense is routinely given free yards by so many of the game's scripted tackles?

If Madden wants to bring its tackling engine up to 2K's level, it needs to get away from the canned animations, and get some fresh physics coded into the game that will seriously consider weight and momentum before determining the impact of a tackler/ball-carrier collision.

Broken Tackles

I am not a fan of the "branching animations" system that EA has added to the last couple of football games because it just seems to be a bandage that is attempting to cover up the larger problems that plague the EA tackling engine (see the section above).

But the branching animations really hurt Madden 10 because running backs with high elusiveness ratings can break out of collisions they obviously should have lost based on weight and momentum.

Pro-Tak contributes to this problem, too, as it's a common occurrence for running backs to be brought to a near stop by two or three guys engaged in a "group hug" session, only to have the running back shake off the group of defenders and bolt out into the open field for a huge gain.

Like a lot of Madden 10's problems, special teams is an area of the game that has been an issue dating back to the Genesis days of the franchise.

Ever since the move to the next-gen consoles and the adoption of right-stick kicking, field goals have been way too easy to make in EA football games. Madden 10 is no exception to the latest EA football trend, with kickers routinely bombing 50-yard cannon shots like they are extra points. The only problem you'll have with the kicking game in Madden 10 is the bizarre number of holding penalties that get called, which seem to be tied specifically to field goal attempts.

Kick returns have also been a major issue in recent EA football games, mostly because of the engine's speed issues (outlined in the route-running section of this article), as well as defenders tending to stand and play patty cake with blockers (which can also be felt in the game's poor pass rush). Simply get a return man with elite top speed in Madden 10 and watch as the touchdowns come rolling in. I say that because cause once the returner gets past the first wave of blockers, the chances of the him getting touched (or even having to make a cut), are extremely slim.

 

While the general tone of this article is negative, I do want to stress that this is the first current-gen Madden I've had some actual fun with.

Problem is, while there usually is a fun moment that happens every couple of plays, Madden 10 is just too consistently frustrating in the areas that matter most. For that reason I still turn to All-Pro Football 2K8, a game where the "he did what?" moments are the exception, not the norm.

On the gameplay front, Madden 10 definitely takes a few steps forward (Pro-Tak, revamped passing game), but given the fact that it's still leaps and bounds behind All-Pro Football 2K8 in my mind when it comes to producing a consistently realistic on-field experience, it's going to take more than baby steps to regain the gameplay crown that the Madden series once held over Sega during the Genesis days.