My Experience With Madden 10 Tonight and Why I Have a New Respect For it!!!

[splff3000]

Well let me start off by saying that I've been drinking so I apologize for any punctuation errors in advance. SO having said that, let me begin.

Tonight, I went over a friends house to watch the Mayweather/ Mosley fight( If you wanna call it that). While there, I started talking to my friend's son about Madden. I was pretty much talking trash to him(yeah I know, but I was drunk) about how I'm good at the game. He challenged me on Xbox 360. While I'm hesitant to play on Xbox, since I play on PS3 all the time, I went ahead and said ok. The Captain Morgan was talking to me. So we went into the house( we were going to watch the fight in the garage) and I realized something wasn't right as soon as we started. This kid had created himself( J. Ledbetter) at RB and had the Colts maxed out at multiple positions. J. Addai was 99. Peyton Manning was 99. Reggie Wayne and all the receivers were 99. As you can see, most of the team was 99. Once I realized this I was like "Oh boy. I'm about to get my a** tore off". I picked the Raiders lol. This is before any roster updates so they were a 71 OVR lol. Well, I continued on because I got my pride and I had a lot of Captain Morgan in my system. On the first play of the game he ran a toss sweep with Ledbetter( his 99 created player) for 73 yds and a TD. Wow!! I said. I can fix that I thought and said. On my first possession I worked my way down the field and scored a TD to tie the game against his 99 OVR rated team. At this point, I think he realized that I can play. The next possession of his was stopped, or at least I thought, but he went for it on 4th and 13......and got it!!! I realized at this point that this kid was gonna cheese and do all kinds of tricks to win......................that's the way that I like it.

Anyway, he had to work his way down the field, but he scored again to make the score 14-7. I'm talking trash to him( I'm drunk remember) telling him, I'm gonna figure him out if he keeps playing like that. On my next possession, I work my way down the field and scored like I did on my first possession. The score is tied 14-14. Now remember, I'm using the 71 OVR pre-roster update Raiders against his 99 OVR Colts. The whole time we're playing, I'm thinking this is who they made madden for, kids like this. Anyway he get's the ball back and I stop him on his first 2 downs and something happens. I've seen all 6 of his plays and don't have anymore plays so I know to expect the toss sweep on 3rd down(he's gonna go for it on 4th down anyway). I pick a defensive play to stop it and it works magnificently. Now it's 4th and long and of course I stop him. So now I pretty much have him figured out.

Leave it to Jamarcus to throw an INT, one that he returns for a long way, but I have him figured out now so he can only settle for a FG. I get the ball back with about a minute before the half and the score is 17-14 his way. I get the ball and, using everything that I've seen about him earlier in the game on defense, I work my way down the field and score with 30 seconds left in the half. I'm now winning 21-17. At this point, my boy calls and tells me that the fight is about to start so I tell the kid that we can only play to the half because I'm gonna leave when the fight starts. He says that's cool because you left too much time on the clock and I'm gonna score on you to win the game. I say I got you figured out and I'm gonna score on YOU(I still been drinking remember). He says "we'll see then". On his first play, he runs some play that I've never seen before and get's out of bounds with 22 secs left on the clock. I then put my Madden knowledge to the test and call a dime DB blitz( he likes to sit in the pocket waaay too long). It works for a sack and he calls a timeout to stop the clock. It's now 15 secs left. I figure now he's gonna try something short to set up a Hail Mary so I call a cover 2 and sure enough Asomugha intercepts it and runs it back for a TD. I'll never for get the look on that kids face as we went to halftime with me winning 28-17. It was priceless. I can tell b yhis expression that he had never had that happen to him before. We didn't get to finish the game because the fight was starting, but we didn't need to finish. The damage had already been done.

After we turned the game off, I then began to think about something. All these years I had always wanted Madden to be more about strategy and less about stick skills and teams and tonight I had just proved that it was. I proved that strategy would beat out stick skills, "cheating" teams, and money plays today. For some reason I felt good about the semi-victory. I know the kid didn't feel good because he wasn't the same for the rest of the night and for some reason I apologized to him lol. For some other reason, that seemed to make him feel better lol. I don't know why but it did lol. Anyway, the point I was trying to make with all of this is that Madden 10 is not all that bad. It's definitely not as bad as I make it out to be sometimes. Any football game where strategy will out weight stick skills and "cheating" teams is ok in my book. I don't know if anyone has had an experience like this, but I'd be interested in your story if you did. Post your Madden "strategy beats stick skills" story so we all can see it.

EDIT: Added paragraphs for my boss lol.

[Valdarez]

Dude. Less drinking, more carriage returns.

[N@X_WiZaRD]

lol, bro, your friend just sucks at Madden. If some online nerd had that 99 team, you would be getting exploited up the as/s with passes to the flats. In this case, your friend sucks so much that the only way he can offer a competitive fun game is if he plays as a 99 OVR team. Which isn't anything to be ashamed of. I let my sister pick Manchester United all the time in Fifa, which is essentially full of 99 players.

[JoeSchroeduh]

So wait... you were drinking? I think you need to make it a bit more clear to us all whether you were drinking or not. I think drinking would have had a huge affect on the game. Were you drinking at all? I bet if you were drinking you really would have talked some ****. I think you should have been drinking.

[WhiskeyD0G]

The amount of words in your post is leading me to drink...A LOT.

[joejccva71]

I didn't even read your post because I just woke up and all I see is a wall of text. A very bad wall of text man. Please edit your post and use some paragraphing. I employ you.

[splff3000]

Quote: Originally Posted by joejccva71

I didn't even read your post because I just woke up and all I see is a wall of text. A very bad wall of text man. Please edit your post and use some paragraphing. I employ you.

Do you mean implore me? I don't really think you're my boss lol. Anyway, I fixed the first post for ya.

lol at all of you guys!! Yes, I had been drinking......a lot, but that didn't affect what I was trying to say. A few things though:

- It wasn't my friend, it was his kid.

- He tried to use the flats a lot, but between my manual rush and my modified cover 2, he couldn't get it consistently. You noticed Aso's interception was in the flats.

- The kid was good. I'm sure he beats up on people all the time. I was just better.

The point that I was trying to make with the story was that proper play calling and strategy can beat cheese and stick skills in madden 10. I don't play online much anymore( because they changed the speed to slow, not because of cheese) so I don't get to play cheese like this anymore. It feels good when your straight up play beats cheese. I'm sure some of you understand what I mean.

[LeonM]

Alot of times the 99 ratings don't mean what they should. There are so many AI exploits in the game. The strategy in Madden is to find plays where you can take advantage of your opponent's CPU players. Alot of times 99 rated CPU players don't do realistic football assignments on the field in Madden.

In a way, You are beating the CPU more than you are beating your friend at Madden. When you play a friend who knows how to take advantage of your cpu players AI. That's when strategy and execution comes into play. That's when you face real competition.

Madden's game play engine is flawed but if the designers can get the AI right for the players and have them do realistic football assignments during a game. Then the animations won't have to cheat to compete. You can have a great strategic game even if there are some flawed animations. The key is the AI.