Madden NFL 12 Gameplay Preview

[illwill10]

I am glad that the Running Game is way better. I was hoping he was going to go over juke and truck animation.

[DGuinta1]

Notice alot of "skating"?

[TMJOHNS18]

Also, I'd like to add I agree with you in kicking, full user control makes any kicker ice. Just like you said, take a look at NBA 2k11's free throw usage and do that for kicking.

[Hooe]

Foremost, thanks a bunch for the write-up, Chase.

Cherry-picking from the previous questions I posted:

Gameplay: What's your impression of pass protection? Is there evidence that work has been done so that LEs are no longer as dominant, and REs have more of a fair shake?

Gameplay: has work been done to make man coverage effective without the "psychic DB" visual issue where the DBs will run a receiver's route before the receiver does? You specifically spelled out that you didn't feel this was the case with zone coverage, which is a promising sign.

Gameplay: could you go into a bit more detail about the 3-4 defense, specifically with regard to the presence of DLs occupying multiple blockers?

Gameplay: will we see any new penalties this year, such as defensive holding (which is all-too-common in today's NFL)? Will penalties in general be more prevalent?

[CFTejada]

I hope Passing is hard & Zone defenses are over effective....

Madden 11 has no defense...

In all my leagues I participated in scores were in the 30's,40's and even in the 50's at times.....Madden tournaments I attended scores were in the 40's with 3 min quarters on All-Madden.

I hope they make this game challenging

[Only1LT]

A few thoughts/ questions on your write up.

QB movement in the pocket in Madden is atrocious, and I’m disappointed to hear that this is still the case, although I could tell this much from the vids. You touched on a point that has long been a frustration of mine, and that is the notion that we get a lot of these nonsensical animations, because Tiburon philosophy is, or they cater to those that think that, having total control at all times is a necessity.

“The game has to allow you to run backwards and throw the ball across the field; otherwise some gamers would be upset. “

Things like this really irk me and I’m not sure what it will take for Tiburon to understand that the game can have 10 billion polygons for every player, but it will still look like an 8bit arcade game if cartoony animations and weird interruptions are allowed. They need to decide if the game is really supposed to be a sim or if it is still an arcade tourney game. Add the realistic transition animations that this series desperately needs. People need to understand that it’s ok if the QB has to actually slow down, stop, turn, balance himself, set his feet, and then throw, when he was running away from the intended target, and not have it just spin and fire in a millisecond, because they can’t stand to be out of control for even a second.

“So far with this game, I feel much more in control of the situation on deep balls. I have been able to bat away deep balls on downs where I know they might be coming.”

Except that this almost never happens in real life. You rarely see balls swatted on deep balls. If you are talking about Fly’s, QB’s will rarely put a ball low enough that the defender can get their hands on. It will usually be overthrown, or the defender will make the play by stripping the ball as the receiver tries to gather it in rather than swat it. On deep corners, crosses, and posts, again, the ball will either be led too much, or the defender will break up the play after it has touched the receiver’s hands, either via a strip, or a crushing hit. There are too many swatted balls in Madden as it is. The number of passes defensed in Madden is so far out of proportion with reality that it isn’t funny. There are several reasons for that, but I won’t go into them now as they would be whole threads unto themselves. The bottom line is that it is HARD to play pass defense, and although, the way the defense was hamstrung last year wasn’t good either, it seems as if they are going about rectifying things in their usual manner of overreacting the other way in the next edition. That rarely ends well. Something needed to be done, but I think they should have done things differently, but I won’t go into those reasons at this time, for reasons I already mentioned.

Lastly:

“In addition, the removal of suction blocking and suction play in general has been something EA has tried to eradicate for years. While it’s probably not going to ever vanish completely during this generation, the tweaks made to the physics engine do have some clear benefits, as well as a couple potential shortcomings. All in all, the developers are not trying to win the war this year when it comes to the problems surrounding physics and suction blocking, but they do clearly want to win a decisive battle in Madden 12.”

So are you saying that there IS still suction and warping in the game?

Thanks Chase

[bostonsports]

Is the 3-4 defense more realistic? do the de create an edge for the olb's or do they play like 4-3 ends? does the nt take away the middle and create room for those de's to make an edge?

[Droopy03]

iI'm tired of hearing about the feature. This was the feature 3 years ago.